Was digging a trench across the front lawn yesterday and came across the iron gas supply pipe. It was only buried about 200mm deep. Are there any standards specifying depth for something like gas? I know the water main had to be 600mm+ but that is to prevent if freezing in cold weather.
Andrew
Don't know but under my neibours flowerbed only about three inches under by the door, is their gas pipe now lined with plastic and apparently a nice shade of canary yellow. Brian
my gas supply pipe is exposed where it crosses the ditch between my house and the road.
The one from our LPG tank to the house is near-as-dammit 500mm down.
I think mine is at a similar depth, even though it pre-dates the changeover from town gas, which tended to have a significant amount of water vapour i n it - I remember seeing instructions for gas plumbing from that era which stated it was important to control the slopes of pipes to avoid water colle cting and blocking the pipe, and suggested putting a trap somewhere near th e meter. This was a real danger - my father had a gas boiler installed quite early o n, and one winter it stopped working due to a (partial) blockage in the sup ply pipe outside. When we called the gas board (remember those?) a man appe ared with a pump to empty out the trap - he had a record card showing when it had been previously done. Unfortunately the contractors doing the drive had tarmaced over the trap and it's never been found - they eventually fitt ed a new one. Since the advent of North Sea gas that problem has never recurred.
Sounds like there is nothing to worry about then. I seem to remember posting here some years back about a sign that I had unearthed in the front hedge that turned out to refer to the gas pipe water trap.
Andrew
375mm depth of cover. ie., to top of pipe. Deeper in road.
Codes of Practice (standards) are not retrospective and as it is a steel pipe likely to be 30 yrs+. It is possible that it has been replaced with a PE pipe threaded inside the steel pipe or there is a PE pipe nearby and your steel pipe is redundant and cut off at the main.
mark
Ah, that would make sense. I have been in the house 17 years and there is a patch in the path by the gas meter box where, I suspect, a new pipe was put in. Since I have only dug down about 400mm it may be below that. i may take a look at the meter to see what the pipe is.
Andrew
We have a capped end of a metal pipe which sticks up about 5cm from ground level under a shrub. The gas pipe was swapped to yellow plastic in the late 1980s but this thing is a relic dating from town gas and water vapour. It would be too much like hard work to dig it up to investigate (out of curiousity) so it remains. The shrub is safe.
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