Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Question for the Propane people

My propane people will drive an F-450 about 39 miles one way to blow the dust off of my thermocouple and light my pilot

FOR FREE. And have done it

they’ll come out here at 2 am if I think I have a leak

FOR FREE…and have done it


youre a dope and your propane company sucks

I'm a propane guy and this is exactly what I'd do.

Really?

If I've read the OPS posts correctly, he's stated that he's busted up older guy that hit his propane riser while mowing and wants to be sure he didn’t create a underground leak.

Exactly how do you remedy this with a bottle of soap?

If it isn’t bent badly and isn’t leaking, don’t worry about it. If it was leaking you would smell the Mercaptan in the gas. Propane is oderless, Mercaptan adds that cshitty smell. Put a squirt of dish soap in a spray bottle with water, spray everything on tank and the place you hit. A little bend in the copper won’t hurt a thing. I’m sure the pressure regulator is on the tank, pressure in your line is less than 1 PSI. That is the same with natural gas going to a home. The owners side of the meter is less than I PSI. Gas companies here will give commercial customers 5 PSI that is used outside the building, like on the roof, underground to other buildings on property, but when lines go inside there is a regulator reducing the 5 PSI to less than 1 PSI. I bet you are fine as is. Residential customers get less than 1 PSI.

It’s hard to accurately test gas without using a mercury gauge. Spring gauges aren’t nearly as accurate.


If you live in a city and smell gas in your house or on your property, shut it off at meter, call a plumber. If you call the gas company, they will lock your meter shut, make you have a licensed plumbing company pull a permit, test line for a city inspector before turning your gas back on. It’s called a GTO. Show your wife how to shut off the gas, way cheaper to call plumber to start with. I hated GTO calls. I’ve seen people charged 1000.00 for a pilot out, because they smelled gas, called the gas company first.

The stupid ass administrators at the schools would call the gas company, fire department, we had to locate and repair the damn problem anyway. Most of the damn smell was exhaust from big ass boilers and water heaters. The Dumass custodians would prop a door open by a mechanical room to take out the trash, AC or wind would take smell inside. I do not have to fuuuck with those people that were educated beyond their intelligence level anymore. The dark administrators were the worst to deal with.

Boilers by a car rider line, caused a lot of grief, exhaust pipe on some boiler be 15 inch. A lot of burnt gas come out, sometimes there would be 3 at a high school, plus domestic water boilers. Damn parents flip out if they smell anything.

I had an elementary by a sewer treatment plant. A southwest wind would fill school up with sewer smell.
Got calls for that often. Not no more!!

You use the soap to locate the leak, then make repairs if necessary.

No, read what he said again. You can't use soapy water on a copper pipe that's in the friggin ground.

It says where it came out of the ground. Dig around it six inches in the ground. Soap around where it was hit. If it isn’t leaking and just egg shaped, it’s ok. Just as much gas will pass through the line. You could expose the underground copper, fill ditch with water, check pipe that way. It depends on length of line, slope of land, and how ambitious he is.

Well thats a good point. Overall I think the guy is worried about nothing.

If no leak, make every gas appliance come on to make sure you enough gas is coming through. A water heater or heating unit have low pressure safety cutoff features. Get those going, turn stove on last, see if heater or water cuts off. If everything is on and stove flame look fine, good to go. That is assuming the supply was big enough to run everything to start with.

A customer rarely uses everything appliance at one time, but should be sized to do so. I had a half inch OD line that supplied my old house. Tank was a hundred feet away. That small line would run clothes dryer, stove, water heater, and heating unit.

He is probably using everything now, I assume?? If it was leaking, they would smell it by tank I would bet money on.

I had a smell by my meter. It’s by the house, not at street. I soaped all the visible joints and the regulator. I dug around the gas riser (metal ninety that adapts yellow plastic pipe to steel), filled hole with water, bubbles came up. It was compression coupling where plastic connected to the metal riser. That belonged to my gas company.

Sometimes regulators go bad. They have rubber diaphragms that will fatigue over time. You can cup your palm under the regulator vent, soap until you fill vent up. It will continually bubble if bad. Regulators burp gas from time to time. Those integral equipment regulators in mechanical rooms are vented to the outside atmosphere individually, can’t be teed together.

Thanks for the help with clarity of my question.

I've understood the bubble effect for sometime but I suppose a refresher course never hurts.

If it is a big leak, won’t bubble, blows soap away.

You misread the OP’s assessment of his situation.

OK, I will go through this once again. I hit the copper pipe, above ground, where it comes out of the ground and then changes to black steel pipe that goes under the house. I am worried that the iron pipe under the house might have a leak from the jarring of the pipe when I hit it. I will replace the copper that is not under the house, even though it is not leaking, it has a damaged spot that I want to replace. I simply want to check as a precaution, the under the house part. I am aware that I can spray soapy water on the part that is easy to get to out side of the house. miles

Coupled with this....



Is what led me to believe you simply wanted to do a pressure test from outside to be sure the underground and under the house piping were in good order being your not in the physical shape required to dig and crawl under your home.

Dont worry about it.😎

Place I work was built in the late 60s, been there 23 years.
We have furnaces and big (12' x 40' double decker) ovens, all
burning gas. For years we would complaint to maintenance 😂😂😂
about gas smell. All over the place.

Of course none of them could smell it. (Hear no evil, see no evil, smell no evil. Go drink coffee in the cage)

One day it was pretty bad, and a gas company guy was there.

We were shut down immediately, no concern for product loss or
any other issues. Almost every pipe joint in the place was leaking and
we had considerably more pressure in the system than allowed.

Lost a couple days work over it, haven't smelled gas since.

If you didn’t hit it hard enough to tear the copper, you ain’t gonna have a leak Miles. I’d feel the same if it was mine, did plumbing for 50 yrs.

A fellow could have a lot of fun with can of that Mercaptan crap, have people chasing their tails all over looking for leaks.

And that 11" of water column is less than .4 PSI (4/10 PSI). I was "a lot of years old" before I realized that propane lines were so low of pressure.