Gas Piping

Since we are replacing the kitchen in the new house, I decided to replace the all electric range with a gas cooktop and I also decided to replace one of the wood burning fireplaces with a gas fireplace. To do this I need to run some new pipes to supply these devices with gas. I was originally going to hire a contractor, but that would require making phone calls, talking to people, scheduling the work and forking out a large sum of money. I've worked with iron pipe before, and I have a talented second, so we just decided to do it ourselves.

The big problem with iron pipe is if you need a piece of a specific length. Building supply houses like Lowe's and Home Depot carry pipe in a variety of lengths ranging from one inch to ten feet. You can use couplings to piece together a combination of these pieces to make any length you desire. The downside is you end up with more joints, joints that have to sealed, tightened and inspected. Plus a bunch of joints in a short length of pipe looks 'unprofessional', not that anyone is every going to see it.

Ridgid Exposed Ratchet Threader Set

My first thought was that this was an opportunity to invest in a set of Ridgid pipe threading tools. They are kind of expensive, something around a thousand dollars, but if you want to get the job done without a lot of screwing around, good tools are essential. The downside is that this is probably the only project I will need them for, and then I would have to fool around with getting rid of them. They are too expensive to just throw away, so that means selling them: placing an ad, answering calls, more dealing with people.

Rothenberger Pipe Threading Machine

Then it occurred to me that there is probably a service that will cut and thread pipe for you, and what do you know, both Lowe's and Home Depot offer free pipe cutting and threading. It means a couple of hours of my time driving across town, tracking down the big box store's pipe guy and waiting while he cuts the pipe, but with my back problems I'm not good for much else. I can still drive and I can hobble the quarter mile from the car to the depths of the big box store where the pipe threading machine resides.

I stopped by Lowe's in Hillsboro the other day and found that their pipe threading machine is out of order. Now what? I am not going to Home Depot, the last time I was there, there was a long line of people waiting to get in because of the stupid COVID-19 restrictions. Haven't run into that at Lowe's, which makes me happy. Okay, maybe not happy, I still have to wear a stupid mask, so let's say just not too disgruntled.

I could call one of the other Lowe's (there are three of them, all about 20 miles away), but calls to any kind of big operation is kind of crap shoot as to whether you will get any kind of useful response. Yesterday for instance I called NW Natural (the gas company) three times. The first time I slogged through their robo-cop menu and after about a five minute wait I got connected to a woman who dealt with my issue quickly and competently. The second time I was on hold for 20 minutes and got disconnected. The third time I knew the codes and so was able to bypass robo-cop and got connected almost immediately. Like I said, a crap shoot.

Anyway, I decided to try a professional pipe supply company. Got connected to someone almost immediately and explained what I wanted. Told me he would get a quote made and email it to me. Haven't heard back yet and that was two days ago.

Free Pipe Cutting and Threading Video
SquiggleMom

So I drove to Tigard, hobbled into Lowe's, found an employee and sent them off to find the pipe cutting guy. It only took about five minutes for him to show up, just long enough that I was starting to wish for a chair. Now we look at my list of pipes I want cut. Turns out most of them are below their minimum length of two feet, so I only got two pipes cut. With their fancy pipe cutting machine it only took a couple of minutes and there was no charge. Hard to beat that.

Old Gas Meter

The gas company came out and changed out the gas meter for a larger one. We need it to supply all the new doo-dads. We needed to hook up the furnace so they could verify that the meter was working properly, so we did. It's nice that the furnace is working now, it's been a bit chilly here the last couple of days.

Of course, when we hooked up the furnace it didn't kick on immediately. It had power and now it has gas again, what could be the problem? Near as I can tell, when we turned off the gas the house cooled down, the thermostat said 'more heat', the furnace began it's start up procedure, but because there was no gas, it didn't fire up, which caused it to shut down and set a fault code (the little blinking LED on the control board).  Cycling the power was enough to clear the fault and get it going. The start up procedure is kind of interesting.

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Mercury Pipe Threader

When I lived in Houston I had a job fixing machinery and one of the machines I was often called on to repair was a Mercury pipe threading machine. This was about 50 years ago. Iron pipe had been a mainstay for water lines but was being replaced by copper pipe. Mercury had been a going business but was now fading fast. Our biggest customer was a plumbing company that specialized in automatic fire extinguisher systems, which still use iron pipe. They are tiny portion of the plumbing business.