Hearing odd noises coming from your fire pit? Resist the temptation to turn up the music or simply ignore it. While issues like this are not uncommon – particularly with natural gas installations – it’s essential to make safety a priority and immediately check into the problem. A gas fire pit whistling sound is a common problem that is easy to fix.
There are two probable causes of a whistling noise coming from your fire pit: the quality of the flex line feeding your burner or high gas pressure in the line. Here are our tips for checking and addressing each of these dilemmas.
Flex Line Problems
Typical flex lines feature ridges, and that coupled with a narrow diameter is likely to create a whistling sound. When installing the system, your gas technician should have:
- Used a whistle-free line with varying ridge sizes, which helps to eliminate noise.
- Chosen a line with a wider diameter to minimize whistling by allowing the right amount of gas to flow to the burner at a lower rate of speed.
- Take care to avoid sharp 90-degree turns and/or kinks in the line during installation.
Start your troubleshooting by checking the flex line that feeds into your fire pit burner. If it does not comply with the above requirements, contact your installer for a fix to stop your gas fire pit whistling noise.
An easy way to determine if your flex line is the problem is to remove the flex line and blow through it. If it’s the problem you’ll hear a high-pitched whistle sound.
Gas Pressure is Too High
When a high level of pressure is applied to a small opening, the result is a whistling sound. This is the mechanism at play when the line pressure in your fire pit gas installation is too high. This can result in a whistling sound in your gas fireplace or gas fire pit.
Since natural gas is typically transported at high pressures, a natural gas regulator is often required to mitigate this pressure before the gas reaches the fireplace or fire pit burner. Keep in mind that this work should only be performed by a gas installation professional since they have the know-how to size and install the proper regulator for your fire pit configuration. Pressure guidelines are as follows:
- Natural gas: Between 3.5” WC and 7” WC.
- Propane: 7” WC and 11” WC
(WC = Water Column, 28 WC = 1.0 PSI).
While propane installations are fairly straightforward and don’t often result in performance issues, natural gas installations are a different story entirely. Responsible implementation of gas systems requires complex calculations such as line pressure, BTU requirements, and supply line distance. Again, this is why we strongly recommend not installing a gas system on your own. Give yourself peace of mind by hiring a certified NFI gas specialist to handle the installation.
Caution: Installing gas appliances can be dangerous. Although Celestial Fire Glass provides information supporting DIY efforts, all gas connections should be made by a professional gas installer. We advise working with a certified NFI Gas Specialist. Start your search here: https://www.nficertified.org/public/
