Is this a water tap, and how old?

"sustained".

Actually I think they would, in areas with gas but without mains electricity. I seem to remember advertisements for some interwar housing estates offering a choice of gas *or* electric light. (Gas was probably cheaper, especially if the local electricity company charged 1/- a unit. Elec prices varied very widely before nationalisation and the Grid.)

More usual in bedrooms, to avoid casting a shadow of an undressing person on the blind. Still used into the sixties.

Owain

In message snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, at

Yes, most of the upstairs rooms are bedrooms.

I can see how that could be these case. Although curtains would be another way to avoid it.

And 70s.

Chris

If the pipe is one inch OD then it is almost certainly a 3/4" pipe. The equivalent (but not the same size exactly) of a 22mm copper pipe. And I believe that town gas was delivered at lower pressure so perhaps used bigger pipe than nowadays for the same appliance. So quite appropriate for a cooker or copper.

Several people have advised on how to deal with it (including me, in some detail, at 11:26 today) so why not bring an end to the saga by either dealing with it as advised or ringing a plumber?

Amen to that!

Tim

Good Heavens, I would have expected battery emergency lighting to be standard by then.

Gas light is quite nice for basic illumination but I wouldn?t like to read or work by it.

It would have been (central battery Keepalite systems from the 1920s or 30s in cinemas etc) but it would have been lead-acid batteries needing periodic maintenance.

For an intermittently-used village hall, some gaslights might well have been more reliable.

Owain

In message snipped-for-privacy@news.individual.net>, at 21:16:16 on Sun, 15 Mar 2020, Tim+ snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com remarked:

I think I already agreed I would. Not easy to find plumbers on a Sunday though.

Self contained units were only just appearing, Central Battery systems were years old.

Remember domestic gas pipes run at very low pressure - even if you have a leaking one, its fairly trivial to effect a temporary fix to stop it leaking even if you don't have the skills on site to fix it properly.

(I remember someone I knew who used to be in the demolition business explain how sometimes they would turn up to a site, and find the gas was still connected to the property they were about to knock down. Their normal procedure would then be to whittle a bit of scrap wood down to a suitable size of plug, snap/cut the pipe off in a convenient place, and hammer the plug up the end!)

We recently had the DNO out to sort out our gas c*ck which for some reason had the lever jammed against the wall making turning off awkward. The engin eer who came to do the job took the plug out of the top of the gas riser ou tside and to stop the flow of gas inserted a plunger with two rubber diaphr agms. The thing looked rather flimsy but it did the job.

Richard

I suppose if you are in the demolition business it doesn?t matter, but a friend?s brother was a gas instructor and liked to tell the story of a builder who, towards the end of building himself a new house had to cap off a gas pipe and used the bit of wood technique. The trouble is that piped gas is very dry, so if the wood is not it dries out and shrinks. Poor fit = gas leak, and some source of ignition meant that when the builder returned to his new house it was spread all over the grounds.

Well in case of demolition, that is after all the end objective!

(and to be fair, it was not intended to be a long term fix - only for a day or so until a proper disconnection could be done)

That's weird, I thought all gas mains were a tap, then a meter, then your internal pipework.

Just switch it on and see what happens. It's not like a water pipe, the pressure of gas is bugger all, you can plug it easily if the tap won't turn back off. If you do get gas, cut it under the floor (yourself or get a plumber) and put a new end cap on it.

If you get gas and your meter doesn't turn, free gas! Connect everything to it instead of the meter.

In message <op.0ld3t4l8wdg98l@glass>, at 18:50:18 on Fri, 29 May 2020, Commander Kinsey snipped-for-privacy@military.org.jp> remarked:

The plumber was here today doing some work on the modern gas connection. He's agreed to cap that old one off next week as a gesture of good will, as long as I chip out enough of the floor around the pipe over the weekend for him to be able to fit it.

But you might have found free gas!

Still be interesting to connect a meter to the pipe and find other pipes of metal and look for continuity. Hopefully there will be none. Also in this house the gas was never reconnected when they passed by with the new main, but even so some years later when I needed to remove a tap and pipe poking up in the sitting room one got a strong gas smell that lasted several days, but that was all it was, no sign of anything combustible. Brian