Ever since I bought my house, 15 years ago, there has ben a 1.75" diameter (approx) pipe sticking up through the floor in one of the unused ground floor rooms next to the street. Here is a photo:
I've never seen a pipe like that before. I know that room formed part of a shop many years ago (a fish & chip shop, I think).
Thanks,
Drake
Given the history, and what it looks like there's a reasonable chance that it's a gas supply pipe. There is also a reasonable chance that it's still live so cutting it off say with an angle grinder could be a very bad move.
Transco or whoever is now responsible for pipes will come and check it out for free and if it is a live gas pipe will usually shut it off somewhere in the street leaving it perfectly safe to cut off below floorboards.
I had a very similar looking thing in a front room in my house which used to be a shop, transco came checked it out in the morning, and were back by the afternoon to shut it off, repair the pavement and be on their merry way.
DONT cut it off without checking.
Fash
In article , Drake writes
Yep incoming Gas pipe. Now unused as it's less a meter, but it might be live still or it could be that the gas comes in on a plastic feed elsewhere and that was disconnected and is now not live!......
Looks like a gas pipe to me, but could be an old water pipe, too. Normally
1.75" would be too big for a domestic gas pipe, but as it was a chip shop, it may have required a large gas supply capacity.It is probably still connected to the gas supply. It appears to have been correctly capped off, suggesting that they didn't cut off the other end at change of use.
Christian.
It looks exactly like a slightly larger version of the 1953 gas pipe in my parents old house.
touch at your peril..
Looks like an easy way to get a free gas supply.... (-; Don't the gas Co. worry about folks deviously tapping into capped pipes like that one, thus by-passing the metering/billing system?
Mike D
now that would be illegal !!!............... I wish I had one :-)
| |Ever since I bought my house, 15 years ago, there has ben a 1.75" |diameter (approx) pipe sticking up through the floor in one of the |unused ground floor rooms next to the street. Here is a photo: | |
I agree with everyone else *GAS* do not touch.
However Transco have just spent a bomb replacing such pipes with plastic in our area, including my house, because the old iron pipes were rotten/corroded.
How about imagining that you can smell gas from that area, and ringing Transco on the free help line. At best they might say it is a capped off gas pipe. They might even dig a hole outside your house and remove the pipe, unless you want to reopen as a fish and chip shop. They can not disconnect you because the supply is already disconnected.
I've got one. (well, it looks like the one in the picture) :¬)
Looks like they _might_ have run gas to all the Olde Brixham properties way back when, in the event that one day all houses would be run on Gas.
Ours is capped off about 6" above floor level in the Edwardian (I believe) Bathroom extention/addition.
No record of a gas supply to the house. Hmmmmmmm.... I wonder how many years one could get for theft of Gas.
If the gas mains and domestic connections have been replaced with plastic, it won't be live anyway. When they do the renewal, they pull a plasic pipe through the old steel pipe, and join it into the new plastic main. Any unsused domestic pipes (ceased supply, or never used gas since installation) are simply disconnected at the main.
Like the others say, that looks like a gas pipe, though a big one. There should be a line on the valve head, to indicate if it's open or closed. Closed, I'd hope, to provide a double barrier. Un-capping it, opening the tap, and hooking into an unmetered gas supply would be illegal on I-don't-know-how-many grounds. Opening it up to check on it's contents would also probably be illegal, and potentially dangerous, if it is a gas pipe. Asking the gas supply company shouldn't cost anything, if you're making the enquiry on safety grounds ("I'm thinking of putting a door in here, but don't know if I can rip this pipe out.") ; but if they get the idea that you're trying to do the place up for a better sale price, they might try to charge you for finding out. Don't know what the carrion-sharks of the law courts would have to say about that. Looking at the larger context, is there evidence of a metering cupboard being built around the location? How would it have fitted into the layout of the room as a chippie?
Not necessarily, mains where I am are now plastic but my 'one of these' was still very much live. Assumptions can be dangerous.
Fash
They will come and look for free. Firstly you just say you aren't sure about it. Secondly they don't want you to have the chance to get free illegal gas. No need to say you smell gas or that you're doing the place up. Why justify yourself. Ring them and get it sorted.
I think the op has probably got the message about it being a gas pipe now!
Fash
It's gas, call transco and they'll get rid of it for you...DON'T try and move or cut it yourself
They must have used a different method from the one used in my area, then. Perhaps they only converted your main - and not your domestic connecting pipes - to plastic?
In my road, they inserted a plastic main inside the old iron main, smashing the iron pipe in the vicinity of each domestic connection point. They then cut off the iron domestic pipe a few inches from the main, and pulled a plastic pipe through it all the way to the meter, where they used a special termination device. Finally, they connected the plastic domestic pipe into the plastic main using a self-welding fitting (with little electric heating elements built in, to melt the plastic).
There's no way (with the method used in my road) that an original iron domestic pipe could be directly connected to the plastic main. Equally, there's no way they would insert a plastic pipe into a domestic pipe which didn't have a meter and consumer account associated with it.
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