Lost my natural gas, along with 37k other folks in the area.

So many think that the gas lines are well defined as to location and depth, don't believe it when I worked road construction decades ago we found gas lines, phone lines that were much closer to the surface than listed in the company logs. Once when dreggina a river bottom that had two high pressure gas lines we found them 5 feet higher than the company told us. Yes the operator did need a change of clothes. On another job we cut the President off when we cut a several hundred pair phone line when excavating a creek bed, again not were the company told us and yes the President was not happy the call ended the way it did. We had a gas line hit here in Idaho a few weeks ago again seems the line was not were the maps said it was. just goes to show that not everything is where it belongs

just another reminder to keep the woodshed full if you need it or not

Not to mention that this morning there have been 3 references on Fox Business and Newsmax that "Experts" are forecasting significant Brownouts and Blackouts to some/all the Grid this winter.

One of the reasons we replaced the Montana House Electric Kitchen Range with a Propane powered on was for back up heat. We bought a unit that was exported to USofA from Canada - because it was built with Battey ignitors and WAS NOT California Compliant (which almost al Gs ranges sold now are). California Compliant Gas Ranges shut off Gas flow if the Power Goes off, supposedly to reduce risk of Gas fires in an earthquake; but that means in a Power Outage when that electric heat does not work; the Gas Range does not work and can not be used to help heat up the house as a back up.

I go to church with a young man who's in the field tile laying busyness. He hit a line like that last year with his tile laying machine. The gas company tried to charge him $45,000 for the line repair until the farmer threatened to sue the gas company for the line being 19 feet inside his property line, away from the markers! He didn't pay one dime for the repair either!
When I lived in town my neighbor was having a pool installed. The contractors called for line markings beforehand of course. While digging the pool 10 feet from the markers he cut the gas line, and the whole neighborhood had to be evacuated!

So NO those lines aren't always where they say they are!

I paid for college on a gas pipe crew running jackhammer, pick and shovel, welders helper. Was fun.
I would think the weight of that rig could crack an old rotten pipe in soft ground without even hitting it.

We were on one side of the NorthShore Shopping center and a D-4 with a ripper on the other side found an 8" high pressure main, and lit it. Killed the guy. Dozer sat there in a ball of fire for awhile. Impressed my teenaged self that the main was staked 20 feet wrong.
We bet our ass on pictures painted on pavement. We broke a 600v streetlight service once. It turned on at 5PM. Bang.

One of my crews tasks was to re-lay old mains, so I got to see close up WWII or older bare steel laid in plain ground, wasn't much left of the steel. We were just starting to use plastic pipe, we mostly made high pressure plastic coated steel services. I painted and taped a lot of welds, and proved the cathodic protection worked because the crew peed on the anodes, dry anodes in dry soil didn't do much.

Down town Salem Mass was 1890's low pressure 18" or bigger cast iron. Was fun as a kid to make catholes in the middle of a busy street, put saddle clamps on the ancient oakum and lead joints. Nowadays the old cast iron is a conduit for new plastic pipe. I was certified to weld plastic pipe, whole subject made our crew welder take to drinking heavily.
He protested. Any idiot can weld plastic.

Worst part of the job was old granite cobblestones. Foreman collected them and sold them for $1 (1971$) each
so I was not allowed to even scratch them when I jacked through the tar and concrete.
Jackhammer was a better education than Umass, and I liked honest work better, too.

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Originally Posted by MUSTANG

Not to mention that this morning there have been 3 references on Fox Business and Newsmax that "Experts" are forecasting significant Brownouts and Blackouts to some/all the Grid this winter.

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I'm reading that, too. There are actually I think seven grids in the USA, not one. They are linked, but no so that one going down kills them all. There's a very interesting book out called Shorting the Grid by Meredith Angwin that goes into how federally mandated changes to grid management and regulation have made them all super-vulnerable. She knows what she's writing about, having been deeply involved in grid management herself for many years. It's a severe indictment of how "climate change" scammers have bulldozed ignorant legislators into making bad law for the benefit of the failing "green energy" industry.

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Originally Posted by Ithaca Gunner

If we would loose power for an extended time, I still have a dug well I can draw water, a coal/wood stove in my shop and one I can hook up on the porch. An interesting item I inherited from a neighbor is a galvanized tub with a chimney and flu. It's factory made with instructions on the side. From what I remember it uses used motor oil as fuel. He bought it decades ago to heat his garage. It's hard to describe without photos, it's like a wash tub with a cover and chimney, it's about six feet high when assembled. I don't know as I would use it in a non-vented area though.

A/C-I can't sleep without it in the summer!

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That sounds like the oil stoves known as orchard heaters. During frost conditions many would be set up in citrus orchards.

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Originally Posted by uscra112

Whom did you have to piss off to get stationed on Adak?

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My detailer. Adak wasn't so bad, except for all the CT's that thought the Navy revolved around them. Good training for raising my daughter a few years later.

The bad part was that I got sent to Japan immediately after Adak, to a ship that was going to Cambodia and Thailand.

Alaska in October to the tropics three weeks later. Uniform of the day was UDT shorts and a t shirt. Can you say sunburn?

Robert

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Originally Posted by tommag

That sounds like the oil stoves known as orchard heaters. During frost conditions many would be set up in citrus orchards.

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That makes perfect sense.

This is the Oil Fired Stove's we used in the USMC for GP Tents Large - Back When. Currently they sell at Army Navy Surplus stores for about $300.00 with the Oil Fuel Regulator and about 12 Feet of Stove Pipe.


Attachment 319809

I am sorry I retired as that relight will run into the millions of $$$. Avista will bring in help from neighboring utilities.

If the line had 800 PSI it wasn't held together by rust. When you call for a locate you agree to expose the crossing for 3 feet either side of the marks to a depth of which you plan to excavate, also federal specs. From the pictures it looks like that didn't happen. It was farmed this year and the weight of the equipment didn't disturb it then, my guess is it may not be where it was marked but it was hit.

For the uninitiated, pipe doesn't have to be really thick to hold a lot of pressure, just perfectly round. I know of an old line that ran 900 psi that was 0.188" wall. Really glad I wasn't welding that one hot.
If the line was not where it was marked, the locator would bear the cost. In any case the lawyers will make their boat payments.

When they redid the water and sewer in my town the gas company also replaced all the gas lines. Mine was marked as 4' into the street, it was 8' away and running under where the sidewalk used to be(that cracked and broke up years ago, instead of fix it the city just tore it up)...

The line they pulled up was BAD, crumbled when touched!

Over the past 10 years or so my area has been laced with "gathering lines" - pipes from the new gas wells to the processing station they built on a hilltop about a mile south from me. These are steel - I saw them going in. ~4 inches diameter. Low pressure, maybe. Hopefully the wells will have petered out and the lines blocked off before they rust. Thankfully none run across my property. Property owners who DO have lines were promised lease payments which are always late, if they are paid at all. About 3-4 years ago a weld failed on one (so they said). The gas caught and burned a nearby house to the ground. Nobody injured, thank God. /rant

Pipelines are required to have anti corrosion systems in place and have since the 70's, It got really strict about 25 years ago with an explosion in NM. The most common method is anodes. You build a 40' hole and fill it with railroad rails. Connect them all and put a voltage on it that ensures they are charged with a negative voltage. That is connected to steel pipe and a -0.085 or larger number negative voltage is maintained. Done properly it attracts a small amount of minerals from the ground rather than loosing them.

National Fuel Gas Code defines low pressure as less than one lb.

That's encouraging, for all this new pipeline construction around here. We're deep into the Marcellus Shale gas field.

I keep a few ceramic propane heaters around for an emergency. Lately I'm thinking about getting a diesel powered heater. The run under $150 at Amazon... I saw a YouTube review of one and the sound pretty good.

Got my gas restored and stove re-lit a few minutes ago! Incredible response time! House never got below 67 degrees.

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Originally Posted by Idaho45guy

Got my gas restored and stove re-lit a few minutes ago! Incredible response time! House never got below 67 degrees.

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At this point I gotta republish this blog comment, in admiration for the crews that accomplished that feat so quickly: There's a thin veneer of hyper-competent professionals who keep the lights on and the water drinkable. Replace them with the incompetent and the water turns brown and the lights go out. Imagine this happening in Venezuela where the socialists drove all those guys into exile.

North shore of Boston is a rolling sandy swamp. Along the tidemarshes the bare steel pipe
was long ago buried in briney mud so it rotted to swiss cheese.

Witchcraft Heights, Salem Ma (who would want to live on Gallows Tree Road?)
is a posh development built on a leather dump, ate the tar off valves,
the shoe factories dumped scraps there for two hundred years, the ground was stinky and very acidic.
Had a couple of near-misses working there the place should be on the X-Files. Go gas go boom.

Coated steel is supposed to be good for a long time, unless you scratch the coating.
Cathodic protection doesn't work if it is shorted out.
Hooray for plastic pipe!

Maybe that's why the fuel oil companies in Boston used to stress the safety of oil heat.