---
title: "Grill will not light"
description: "DCS gas grill repair for a burner that will not light: the ignition path, the supply and the venturi, measured rather than guessed."
url: "https://dcsmiami.support/services/grill-will-not-light-repair/"
date_modified: "2026-09-14"
Appliance type: "bbq-grill"
---


# DCS grill will not light

### Worked backwards from the cylinder, not forwards from the ignitor

Three separate systems produce this one symptom and they are checked from the far end inwards: supply, then ignition, then burner. Working the other way is how people end up with a new ignitor on a grill whose cylinder valve was never fully open. The single most useful test costs nothing and can be done before we arrive — if a burner lights from a match but not from the spark, the gas is arriving and the problem is electrical. In this market the supply end is the commonest answer by a wide margin, and the flow limiting device inside an LP cylinder valve is the reason: it closes down after a valve opened briskly and then passes just enough gas to be convincing.

What this involves

One burner dead, or the whole set — that single answer splits the diagnosis in half

Lights from a match but not from the ignitor: that sentence halves the diagnosis

A tripped limiting device on a cylinder imitates a dead grill

Establish the supply before touching the grill

Cylinder valve, regulator, flow limiting device, or the wall valve and the pressure behind it on natural gas. A limiting device that has tripped passes just enough gas to be confusing rather than none at all, which is why it is so often missed.

Test the ignition path rather than the ignitor

Module or battery, wire, electrode, ceramic and earth. A cracked ceramic will spark somewhere that is not the burner and look perfectly healthy doing it. Salt in a cracked insulator is the local version of this problem.

Then the burner itself

Ports blocked by grease and carbon, a venturi with a nest in it, a burner that has burned through at the ends. We clear or replace, then light every burner in front of you and watch the flame settle rather than declaring it fixed when it catches.

### Should I keep pressing the ignitor?

Please do not. Each press with a dial open releases more gas into the firebox, and if it does catch after several attempts it catches all of it at once. Turn everything off, give it a minute to clear, and try again — or stop and call somebody.

### It worked last weekend and not today.

That is useful rather than mysterious. Something changed in between, and it is usually the cylinder, a cover left on through heavy rain, or a stretch without use long enough for something to move into a venturi tube. We ask what the grill has been doing since it last worked.

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