---
title: "Lighting a DCS Grill in the Right Order, and Why the Order Matters"
description: "How to light DCS grill burners in the right order, and what each step rules out — supply, spark and gas, separated before anybody buys a part."
url: "https://dcsmiami.support/blog/dcs-grill-lighting-sequence/"
date_modified: "2026-09-14"
Category: "Common Problems"
---


# Lighting a DCS Grill in the Right Order, and Why the Order Matters

There is a right order, and almost every call we take about a grill that will not light is somebody working it backwards — starting at the ignitor, which is the last thing in the chain rather than the first.

## How to light DCS grill: supply first, and slowly

On LP, the valve on the cylinder contains an excess flow device. It exists to shut things down if a hose is cut, and it cannot tell the difference between a severed line and a valve yanked fully open in one movement. Once it has closed down it does not announce itself: it simply passes a fraction of the gas it should.

That is why a grill can light, run gently, and refuse to sear — and why people replace burners over it.

Open it over two or three seconds. On natural gas, check the wall valve is fully open rather than nearly.

## Then the spark, one burner at a time

Push and turn one dial. You should hear the module click and the burner should catch within a few seconds.

If it does not: turn that dial off, lift the hood, and wait a minute before trying again. This is the step people skip, and skipping it is how a firebox accumulates gas that lights all at once on the fifth attempt.

## What each step has told you

By the time you have done this once, three things are separated that were tangled before:

**It lights properly.** The supply delivers, the spark reaches, the burner passes gas. Nothing is wrong.

**It lights from a match but not from the spark.** Gas is arriving and the ignition path is the problem — an electrode, a ceramic, an earth. That is a different page and a modest repair.

**It will not light from a match either.** Gas is not arriving at that burner. Now the questions are the supply, the regulator, or an obstruction in the burner and its venturi — and in this climate, at the start of a season, an obstruction very often means something built a nest in it.

## The preheat nobody gives it

A grill this size has a great deal of metal in it — grates, radiants, a heavy firebox — and all of it has to come up before the cooking surface is at temperature. Judging the grill after five minutes is judging it while it is still heating itself.

Fifteen minutes with the hood down and every burner on high is the honest number. On an exposed terrace in a winter breeze it can be longer, and that is the wind rather than the grill.

## When the sequence stops being an owner's job

Two points, and we would rather be plain about both.

If you can smell gas at any stage, the sequence ends. Close the supply, leave the ignitor alone, and let somebody look at it before it is used again.

And if a burner lights but will not hold a low flame, that is a separate problem that only shows at the bottom of the range. It is easy to miss because the grill appears to work, and it is worth mentioning when you call.

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**[Read full article: Lighting a DCS Grill in the Right Order, and Why the Order Matters](https://dcsmiami.support/blog/dcs-grill-lighting-sequence/)**