some sort of record??

[steve]

On installing an earth bonding cable to the gas meter box found this little treasure. From top of meter (new meter box fitted outside on side of bay window when new yellow gas mains laid in) to tee fitting that used to take the supply from old indoor gas meter a distance of

400mm. so from meter union elbow the short lengh of pipe to elbow to turn pipe downwards then elbow to send supply horizontal, all pretty normal so far.Then another elbow to turn pipe 90 degrees along the front wall of house then elbow to take pipework up wall then another elbow to take pipe through wall (shielded in 28 mm copper and through the DPC!!) then elbow to turn pipe upwards, then another to take it horizontal again then another one to take pipe towards wall, then the final one to take pipe finally to the iron tee piece . A grand total of ten! Am not a corgi but have boned up on subject so to be sure that corgis I do use do the jobs to spec. So 10 elbows at .5 of a meter each plus around 1.5 metres of pipes is 6.5 metres to cover a distance of .4 of a metre wonder what that would do to the gas flow rates!! Before any one says i know that you cant just run pipe from top of meter through side of box to the tee fitting but do reckon that the job could have been done with at the most 6 elbows and a shorter lengh of actually pipe and that about half of the bends could be pulled giving an effective lengh of arround say 3.6 metres

Anyone know of any examples that could beat this?

[BigWallop]

A picture would help. :-))

[Andrew Gabriel]

The old gas pipes in my 1895 house snake all over the place. Town gas appliances more often had their own pressure regulators than do natural gas appliances, so it probably didn't matter as much then. Perhaps the installation you are looking at dates back that far?

[Andy Hall]

True - don't forget though, that the kinds of appliances then were typically lights and small fires at the most - perhaps a washing copper to heat the water.

Modern appliances for NG have some form of regulator in the gas valve whereas, IIRC, older towns gas appliances often had a miniature regulator preceding the valve.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[IMM_reply]

Can't you afford anything more modern?

[steve]

The piping I refered to was the new well newish ( think it was the early eighties that BG renewed the mains in this area ) 22mm copper pipe run when the new meter was installed outside thus linking via the ten elbows to the old gas meter cupboard where it joined into the old house piping mostly 1/2 iron with the old connection points for the gas wall lighting blanked off but sticking out from the bedroom walls etc

The house has the usual in the way of appliances two gas fires cooker and a small CH boiler from its plate 40,000 btus

from the iron tee the supply then divides upsptairs through house and drops down into kitchen for boiler and cooker and down under the ground floor to the two fires

The home owners were on about having a combi in to save space HW tank etc in bathroom I told them expect the quote to include a new run of

22mm pipe to the boiler and to question any quote that didnt include this

[Lobster]

Tell me about it... in my last house, of similar vintage, we found lead piping running throughout the place, in between floors and above ceilings and within walls; it turned out that they terminated in cut-off, crimped-over ends at the position of lights in every room. Slightly scary to find that they were all still hooked up to the gas main.

CORGI man who disconnected it reckoned they were a major hazard if there is a -fire, given that the pipes would melt at low temperature and provide an unending supply of gas to fuel the fire. (He did a drop test on the plumbing first, and was quite surprised to find it was 100% leak-free though!

David

[Christian McArdle]

Yes. This was standard practice when electrification came in. Given a few dodgy gas fires and god knows how many (if any) gas light points were still connected, I had the whole gas pipework replaced when the boiler was put in the loft.

(Cheers John!)

Christian.

[steve]

Yes my Aunt had lead gas piping many years ago and tells the tale of when one day the gas cooker stopped working. Should say that the gas pipe came out of the wall ran 8" across to the door frame and then round the top of the door frame to the gas cooker. She had noticed that the cooker had just before not been running as hot as before. The reason the 8" run of pipe just happened to be the same hieght as the back of the chair for the kitchen table, all the years of pushing the chair back after meals had eventually closed the gas pipe down cutting of the supply.

a few years ago this she smelt gas in the under stairs cupboard the leak was traced by British gas to the sweated tee in the lead pipe one leg of which ran upwards, this leg only a few metres to where new copper was sweated in for the cooker. Instead of replacing this short lengh the fitter some how made a sweated joint upside down it had to have been done upside down as was no sign of pipe having been upturned as wall paper that was over pipe hadnt been damaged. Thats what i call skillful use of a blow lamp.

[Michael Mcneil]

Where did I put my battery charger? I jnow it's in here somewhere.

Someone asked me to bring in my hole saws, stuff I haven't used in years. Can I find them?

And my partner gave me his old mobile phone that too has gone missing. I have the charger for that and I am not yet late for work.

Oh, nearly forgot, I bought another pencil sharpener to deal with those crappy Chinese pencils and found the other one. (And a set of spare blades for the knife I never use.)

Maaaan!!!

These are good tablets.

[geoff]

In message , Michael Mcneil writes

It's really very simple

Forget it and go and look for something else

It will get jealous and suddenly leap out at you demanding attention

That was my tactic yesterday when I couldn't find my tape measure - the bloody thing cunningly crawled on top of the filing cabinet where I couldn't miss it