I sorta confused the issue with two different stories. Both are a tad dicey though the NG range doesn't worry me too much. He was adamant to give it a try. He was saying that the mock fire pit - little lava-like pieces with an NG burner beneath it - has no regulator and he has no trouble with it, and then about a year ago, he had me take the igniter off of the NG burner in the fireplace on their front porch - also outside - as it was a royal pain. That also seemed to work fine with no ill effects. He just turns it on and uses a long match. I've seen this exact sort of setup in houses and such units are sold with no pilot, no igniter so it must be legal.

But the propane heaters worry me more. Propane is heavier than air though NG is not. I have a cousin who is a copper smelting tech and has been to smelters all over the world. He tells me that some of the remote plants that have huge tanks of propane to run the operation scare the hell out of him. These complexes are not small and if a leak were to go undetected it could collect in a large enough shallow such that if it ignited you could burn your feet off before you could run out of it. Ouch.

But I don't think a small tank would be a problem and there's a small creek bed, usually dry, running through their yard (large yard), any leaked propane would just act like water and follow that out. A propane camping stove is safe enough. The regulator keeps the pressure down and you often just light them with a match.

I really like these people, their daughter is the closest I have to a God-daughter in the world. They're Polish - come from the iron curtain weightlifting school - and the guy is pretty macho, really likable, but has the sort of macho that dismisses safety concerns a bit too readily.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K