Home › Adding or Extending a Line
Adding or Extending a Line
A new run to a range, a dryer, a pool heater or a standby generator is the commonest planned gas job there is, and most of what decides it happens before anybody touches a pipe.
Read this first
Extending a line to a range, a dryer, a grill or a generator is permitted work in most jurisdictions. What decides the job is the distance from the meter, whether the existing supply has capacity for another appliance, and what the route has to pass through.
Whether the supply can carry it
Every appliance on the system draws from the same supply, and adding one changes what the existing pipe has to deliver. That is a sizing calculation against the whole load, not a question about the new run alone.
It is also the question a quote should start from. One that does not mention the existing load has not done the arithmetic.
Whether it crosses the boundary
Work beyond the meter is customer piping, governed by local code. Work on the utility side is not a contractor job at all. Which side you are on decides who does it and sometimes whether it can be done.
Source: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Whether it goes in the ground
A run to a detached garage, a grill or a generator is buried line, and it becomes privately owned buried line the moment it is finished. Two things follow: the free 811 call before the excavation, and knowing afterwards that a standard locate may not mark what you have just put in.
Photograph the trench before it is filled. It is free, it takes a minute, and it is the only record that will ever exist of where that line runs.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
And permits
Gas work is separately permitted and separately licensed in most jurisdictions, and an inspection at the end is normal rather than a complication. Ask who is pulling the permit before work starts — the answer should not be you.
For repair work, not for a suspected leak.If you can smell gas, leave and call 911 or your utility from outside; this is the wrong number for that. For everything else — a line, a meter, an appliance connection — we will route you to a contractor covering your area, free of charge to you. Gas work heads this site; other plumbing is handled too.
Call (888) 752-8038