On Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 12:32:29 PM UTC-4, dpb wrote:
On 03/14/2015 10:15 AM, wrote:
...

The lines are mostly black iron; I do not know what the half-mile or so
of line from the pipeline connection in the pasture to the farmstead
actually is; I don't remember altho I _think_ I recall that Dad ran a
new line back in early 60s when we put in the feedlot and a grain dryer
but I don't remember what it was...I keep waiting for it to develop a
leak and have to replace it...

Generally the old underground stuff was bitumen coated black iron,
with welded and wrapped joints. Stuff lasted virtually forever because
there was no oxygen contact to the iron.

I've no idea; it's only bare black iron where the feeds come above
ground but I've not had reason to disturb the ground so no idea what was
laid or even who actually laid it. Since it's service from the meter
(which is a relatively recent addition that the pipeline companies got a
way to break the original right-of-way agreement of un-metered farmstead
use when Panhandle Eastern sold the line) I'm certain a new line was
laid by dad and not the pipeline company; I don't know if one of the
conditions grandpa also got was for them to run the feed line to the
house when they laid the big line or not; I'd presume that would have
been too much even then.

--

I don't know what size pipe he's talking about where it was welded.
I've seen welding done to join large gas mains, eg 12" diameter, but
never the typical small lines to a residence. Those are just black
pipe using couplings/fittings. They are supposed to be covered in a tar type
compound to protect them from corrosion. Like I said in the other post,
at a condo I saw black pipe that wasn't properly coated all fail in
as little as 5 years. There were 120 units where it was buried between
meter and inside. It was obvious that they just poured the tar compound
over it, didn't brush it on. The bottom of the pipes was uncoated. I
was shocked that it could fail so fast. It literally looked like swiss
cheese, holes everywhere. And not just one unit, almost all of them
were in bad shape. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would never
believe it could fail so quickly. I would have thought it would be more
like 25 or 50 years. The builder was known to have cut corners and done
anything to save a buck. I wondered if he managed to get some inferior
Chinese crap black pipe. Another example of what he did was the wood
decks, instead of having footers, had a shovel of concrete thrown under
the posts. The building inspector was last seen heading to parts unknown.
And a decade later, the FBI found $50K in cash in the mayor's attic.....

Also interesting was we had a big discussion with the gas company as
to what the best replacement would be. This was early 90s. They were
as confused as we are. I remember we discussed galvanized vs black iron
and I don't recall they had a good answer either. We wound up replacing
it with black iron, this time properly wrapped and coated.