"Existential Angst" wrote in message
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"Tom G" wrote in message
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"Existential Angst" wrote in message
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Awl -

I'm doing some demo on my 50's kitchen, which was done pretty well,
overall -- 3/4 black pipe to a 6 burner stove, etc.
Except, they tee'd off underneath for the gas line to the oven, using
1/2 or 5/8" copper, flare fitting.

I've been told copper gets brittle with natural gas, and is therefore
against many codes. Is this accurate? Is this a recent discovery?
Seems odd that the original installers would use 3/4" black pipe, and
then wimp out at the end.

Are there similar restrictions with copper and propane? Other gases?
If this restriction is only with nat gas, I assume it's because of the
sulfer additive (smell) that reacts with the copper.

tia
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EA


When I moved a park model mobile home from Wisconsin where it had been
run on propane to Mesa, AZ where it was to be hooked up to natural gas,
the city refused to allow the hook up due to copper tubing being used
for the gas lines. My contractor said he thought the city was wrong and
he pointed out to them that their codes allowed copper tubing if the
tubing had a certain manufacturing code letter (which I don't remember).
I had to call the manufacturer back East to find out where on the copper
I could find that code and then point it and the code regulations out to
the inspector from the city and then it was approved. As I remember it,
the copper had to be a certain alloy to prevent pinhole leaks from
forming from the natural gas.

That's sort of what I remember -- esp. the pinhole leaks, now that you
mentioned it.
Most of the replies here don't seem to be aware of this, mebbe because
only a few places make this distinction.
Your contractor seems like he was on the ball!

What kind of tubing did you wind up using? Special tubing? Flexible or
rigid?
--
EA

Just stuck with the existing flexible copper tubing because it had the
proper letter code to meet code, in the end.
It hadn't made sense to me that the manufacturer would have installed
flexible copper tubing that couldn't be used with natural gas and propane as
they wouldn't have know what the gas source in the field would have been.
Tom G.