Propane Forge indoor use?

[Grant]

Good morning all

I'm in the process of trying to rent commercial space; things are coming up I have never given a thought. Indoor use of a propane forge being one on the list. I have been to several Demos which used a propane forge and don't remember any special handling. They may have cracked a door but the forge sat in the middle of the room. My general thoughts were that the left coast boys used gas because CA was easier to get along with if this was the case. Any who, what is the proper configuration for indoor use of a propane forge including bottle handling and storage and is this documented somewhere I can get my hands on it. I looked at several commercial forge maker's on line sites but could not find any access to on line instructions. I want to be safe and want to satisfy the Building Inspector and Fire Marshal, they put a lot of stock in the manufacturer's recommendations. All help is appreciated. -tks grant

[macbruce]

As far as I know 100lb bottles are reguarded much the same as ox or ace bottles as far as storage or using them........A truck filled tank must be outside. Cracked door??No need for that, I've been using them for 30+ years in enclosed buildings.....I'd like to get by and see your new digs.........mb

[MLMartin]

I don't know much about regulations. But I do know that gas fired forges put off a large amount of NON BREATHABLE gases. Its like running a car in side a garage, close the doors and everyone will die in a few hours. With any type of fire burning in an enclosed space you are burning up the oxygen, oxygen you need to breath. You do not necessarily have to have a door open but you do need to be venting out the bad gas's and bring in new air continually.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DIE you will make sure to monitor the amount of non breathable gas's and always be bringing in fresh air.
There are many types of gas detectors on the market, I am sure some one on this site can help point you to the proper ones.

Macbruce must have good ventilation in his shop, whether it be passive or forced. If there was no ventilation and the building was all sealed up he would have died 30+ years ago.

[Glenn]

You may want to look at the size of Jim's shop, and read the story - CLICK HERE
Notice the shop lay out and the doors open on both ends as well as a man door in the middle of the shop wall.


There are rules and regs for propane indoors. Check them out, as well as the local codes before there is a problem. Usually the codes, rules and regs are there to protect you and others.

Propane forges produce LARGE AMOUNTS of exhaust gases. You should have a vent to get rid of the exhaust as well as a door or window OPEN to allow the same amount of replacement air into the room as is either consumed by combustion or exhausted out of the area. YOU MUST HAVE working smoke detectors, and carbon monoxide detectors in any area there is a gas forge.

Personal safety is just that, your personally taking responsibility for YOUR safety.

[twcoffey]

I'm in the process of trying to rent commercial space; things are coming up I have never given a thought. Indoor use of a propane forge being one

Spend about $50 and get a CO2 and explosive gas detector and alarm and mount it near your gas forge.

[Grant]

Good Morning All

...thanks everyone for the responses. Does anyone have pictures of their vent systems? Willing to post? -tks grant

[macbruce]

Macbruce must have good ventilation in his shop, whether it be passive or forced. If there was no ventilation and the building was all sealed up he would have died 30+ years ago.

I'm not here to offer advise.............I've been running gas forges for a long time in conditions that should have rendered me dead a long time ago by your reckoning, yet here I am. The only real problem I've encountered is improper gas/air mix ie too much fuel.........As Glenn says........


Personal safety is just that, your personally taking responsibility for YOUR safety.

[Rich Hale]

When we respond to a question such as this it is of high importance to be as accurate as we can possibly be. CO and CO2 kind of look alike in print but what our bodies do with these gases are very different. If we inhale enough C02 it may act as an asphyxiant and not allow us to ssned oxygen throughout our tissues. However if we inhale CO@ even in amounts that we do not feel as symptoms it may build up over a period of time to becoome lethal very damaging to our tissues. In fact our body prefers CO over oxygen and CO will more readily bond to our red blood ce3lls than oxygen will.. Once absorbed by the red blood cells it does not release from them and the red blood ce3lls lmust be replaced to get things back to normal. So if you inhale some CO one day and it binds with your r3ed blood cells, it is there until those blood cells die and are replaced. IOf you do nto feel ight heaaded or dizzy or expweiewwnce headaches or loss of ability to use muscles normall you may still haave CO in your system. But remember you haaave lost some of your red blood cells aand their ability to carry oxygen throughout your body and provide life for your system. If you inhale more CO the next day you will lose more red blood cells as the first day. Same for each exposure. At some point you will feel changes develop. When and what kind of changes is up to your system. Lots of folks will relate a headache as the first noticeable warning. A CO detector is a key to checking if you have enough ventilation in and out of the shop. A CO2 detector is not the right tool.

[Dodge]

Another way to look at what Rich said is: CO (one carbon and one oxygen atom) is carbon monoxide; the nasty stuff that comes out of you car's tailpipe. Its colorless and odorless and will most certainly kill you if you breathe enough of it. CO2, carbon dioxide (one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms) is the stuff that gives soda pop its fiz and often used as MIG welding gas. It is inert meaning it wont sustain life but it exists naturally in out atmosphere (about .037% according to wiki) and we exhale a certain amount when we breath and it is absorbed by plants and trees. Burning of organic fuels gives off both types of gasses. The carbon di-oxide won't keep you alive and Al says is causing global warming but it tickles your nose when you drink your Pepsi. The carbon mon-oxide will at best, make you sick. At worst, it will kill you!

[Grant]

Good morning all

While all this is very interesting the Fire Marshal and Assistant Building Official are unimpressed. Is anyone operating in an environment with fire inspections and building permits? What do they say about how you are to operate your gas forge? Is there documentation in place to cover this. I contacted David Star at Chile Forge and he was kind enough to E-mail his operating instructions:

For safe operation we recommend:
*Attaching the forge securely with the provided mounting holes to prevent tip over
*3' feet clearance around the forge
*Cross ventilation for indoor use as well as a Carbon Monoxide Alarm
*Periodic testing of connections with a gas leak detector

Is anyone operating under these conditions in inspected space with an understanding between you and the authorities. Is any of this documented or if it is a vest pocket agreement can my guys talk to your guys.

-tks grant

[Bentiron1946]

I used to do HVAC and fire protection design so I read lots of codes in lots of different jurisdictions all over the country. There is the UBC, Uniform Building Code, the UPC, Uniform Plumbing Code and then the NFPA, National Fire Prevention Association. Now you would think that all of these folks would get together and talk things over but they never seem to get together on much of anything except to hassle the poor designer to death and then everyone of the fifty United States take a different tack on how to interpret this fine codes too. And then each and every county, city, town and fire marshal and code inspector has a different interpretation of the code. Now when I had me a shop/studio I had my propane tank inside even though when the Fire Captain would come by he would always say "The next time I come by and you have that propane tank in here I'm going to write you a citation for doing that", he never did. We were not allowed to have any propane tank in the shop/studio bigger than those little dinky things you use with a plumbers torch. We could have a huge old O/A set up and that was because acetylene is lighter than air not heavier than air like propane. That is what scares the poop out of a fireman. I don't know why, if you fill the top of your shop with acetylene with and flick on the lights you get the same effect as if the bottom of your shop is filled from leaking propane, BOOM!!!!!! I didn't worry overly about a build up of nasty combustion gases becasue of all the holes, gaps, cracks, missing windows in the building, it was not very air tight and that is being kind, it rained as much inside as out. In some parts of the country no matter what size tank, as long it is refillable you must have it outside and piped in, NO exceptions! They are just that afraid of propane. Me I guess I'm either stupid or know how to be safe, I have an oxygen/propane torch next to my jewelry bench, a real nice little set up, neither bottle leaks and I check both on a daily basis. I'm near the fire place and I open the window when I'm using it and I have a positive draft up the chimney so no worries about a build up in the house of noxious gasses. Just use common sense about ventilation, not like them knuckle heads that burn charcoal in a house closed up tight and kill themselves. Make sure you have good ventilation, enough said, BE SAFE :blink:

[MattBower]

The problem you're running into, I suspect, is that makers of small forges for hobbyists, farriers, and smaller shops don't tend to be highly sophisticated operations. They don't have engineers and lawyers on staff to tell them: (1) that they should develop recommendations for this sort of thing, for their own protection; and (2) what those recommendations should contain. (That's probably one reason their products tend to be less expensive than commercial forges by some of the larger manufacturers: less overhead. Of course smaller operations also make less attractive targets for litigation when someone dies of CO poisoning.)

Try a larger operation like Johnson Gas: http://www.johnsongas.com/ You might also try a larger industrial forging shop like Kropp Forge: http://www.kroppforge.com/. People with deeper pockets have more incentive to think about this stuff, and better resources to help them figure out good answers. They also tend to draw more attention from regulators. But be prepared for a more expensive answer than what you're getting here.

[MattBower]

You might also see if OSHA or your state equivalent have any relevant standards.

[ThomasPowers]

1 Don't make plans based on what someone who may have just been lucky does.

2 Another issue is that the amount of CO a forge produces goes WAY UP if it can recycle the exhaust back through the burner. Fresh make up air is mandatory!

3 If cold weather is an issue look into running your forge in a "box" that has an exhaust flue and a blown make up air supply balanced with the exhaust.

I've been to demo's put on by major ABANA affiliates where they ran propane with the doors only open a bit due to weather--and came out with CO headaches several times.

I love my gas forge; but I generally try to use it with 2 10'x10' roll up doors aligned along the general wind direction open and only start closing one of them "slightly" when things start blowing over in the shop---we get a lot of high winds.

[Grant]

3 - If cold weather is an issue look into running your forge in a "box" that has an exhaust flue and a blown make up air supply balanced with the exhaust.

Good morning all
Mr. Powers -I agree with this and have spoken with several Smiths in the area that think hoods are a good idea and someday are going to add hoods to their gas forges, but none have done so. More importantly or more to the point how can we quantify the amount of "make up air". If we can come to a consensus on burners per square inch (One, 3/4" burner for every 350 cu/in of volume naturally aspirated)what is the correct amount of makeup air. If one uses a blown gas forge and we pipe the inlet to the blower to the outside can we quantify the amount of remaining combustion air. Is there any other industry that uses open flame that might have done some of the reserch for us. -grant

[ThomasPowers]

How I would quantify it is to turn it on and adjust the air flow until I didn't feel much blowing past me in either direction. I feel that empiricism is much superior to theory in many cases as we can't quantify all the variables!

[MattBower]

Is there any other industry that uses open flame that might have done some of the reserch for us. -grant

This is why I suggested talking to big-time commercial forge makers and/or forge shops, like the ones I linked above.

ADDED: Make-up air recommendations for various types of rooms. The recommendation 6-7 l/s per square meter of floor area for smithies. 1000 square feet is 93 square meters. 93*6.5=604.5 l/s. Google says that's 21.3 cubic feet per second, or 1278 cubic feet per minute. Again, that's per 1000 square feet of floor. That's a lot of air. Use at your own risk.

[Grant]

Thomas - empiricism is good, however I not sure the powers that be will go for: I will start the makeup air at a point that the air emanating off the forge blows my hair back, then increase the makeup air to a point my hair is is sucked up the flu and split the difference. It is certainly valid, but I believe officials want quantified documentation.

Matt Thanks, I did look at the links and found operating instructions for their gas forges. They did address the flu with a hood and mechanical blower(no mention of cfm) but no mention of makeup air, also I'm trying to come up with a generic solution. As it is now the building department is skeptical of using Chile Forges E-mailed operating instructions with my home built.

tks all grant

[MattBower]

Matt Thanks, I did look at the links and found operating instructions for their gas forges. They did address the flu with a hood and mechanical blower(no mention of cfm) but no mention of makeup air, also I'm trying to come up with a generic solution. As it is now the building department is skeptical of using Chile Forges E-mailed operating instructions with my home built.

tks all grant

Don't just look at the sites. Call them! I can almost guarantee you there is someone at one of those places who knows a lot more about this subject than what's on the website, and that person may be much more willing to have a conversation with you about it than to than commit to it in writing on a website for the whole world to see, forever. What you need is someone who has gone through the process and can tell you not what the answers are in your specific case, but where he found (at least some of) them. Of course the answer may turn out to be, "we had an HVAC engineer figure it out."

[MattBower]

How I would quantify it is to turn it on and adjust the air flow until I didn't feel much blowing past me in either direction. I feel that empiricism is much superior to theory in many cases as we can't quantify all the variables!

I think Grant is right. I suspect these guys want written standards and engineering calculations -- and then maybe some empirics.

[ThomasPowers]

Just don't let the theory end up getting you hurt! My Father used to tell me that "many a good man has gotten killed by theories that *should* have worked!"