Gas Line Re-Route

Gas line

The gas lines in the basement are predictably terrible. Like everything in the house they were done right at some point and then redone wrong later. Like so much that we’ve done, we’re doing them less wrong temporarily and we’ll do them brand new later.

Let’s see if I can describe the situation. The gas main comes in at the front of the house and goes to the meter. There used to be two meters, but one of them was removed at some point. From the one meter, three lines branch off and go to the same general area at the back of the house: one for the boiler, one for the dryer, and one that feeds the hot water heater and stove for the second floor. From where the other meter used to be, a line goes back and connects to the hot water heater and stove for the first floor, as well as a line that feeds the long-disconnected gas lamps that predate electricity in the house. Since the second meter is disconnected, that line is tied into the line that services the second floor, but they left the whole thing connected. Finally, from one of the water heaters a line branches off to provide gas to where the basement stove used to be as well as a capped line to the basement living room where we guess there may have been a space heater. The boiler line is 1″ pipe that reduces to 3/4″. The rest is all 3/4″ except for the basement apartment lines that are done in 1/2″.

The two lines that connect to the hot water heaters and stoves run along either side of the beam in the basement. Since we’re replacing the beam we need to remove these gas lines. That was the project for last Sunday. I asked Dean for assistance, since every time I went into the basement to look at the gas lines I just got overwhelmed and did something else. I bought a bunch of fittings and some metal cutting blades for the angle grinder and reciprocating saw and we got started.

Undaunted

Dean was decidedly not overwhelmed and in no time we had the gas shut off and were using my angle grinder to cut out the old sections of pipe. Once cut, we used some pipe wrenches to disconnect the either side. I had a rough plan that we used to tap off the line servicing the boiler and connect it to the water heater and stoves.

Dean had borrowed a pipe threader that we used to make the appropriate lengths from the pipe we had removed.   With some elbows, thread compound and valves I had bought, we assembled the new connections. We also removed the gas line that went to the basement living room and disconnected the line supplying the old gas lamps.

New connections

The result fed gas to all the same appliances with a minimum of new pipe. I removed the two lines that ran along the beam and everything worked without any leaks. As an added bonus, the new line had valves that can shut off individual segments without having to turn off the gas at the meter.

Gas line-free Beam

I still have an electrical conduit to move that also runs along the beam, but other than that we’re looking pretty good for getting our structural work done. On top of that the basement actually smells better!