i have a cooktop that is supplied with natural gas.. wife always smells gas leaking.. i cant smell anything from all the years of smoking..... is natural gas heavy(goes to the ground like gasoline) or does it float away up like some other gases(helium)??? thanks for a reply.. i am gonna go the old soap and water route to see if i can find the leak if there is one.......
Fred
Air does not have a Sp Gr of 1, WATER is 1.00, unless they are using air as a different reference point.
Jon
^^^^^^^^^^^^ If natural gas has a SpGr of .6, it certainly is not with respect to water, or it would weight 38 lb/cu ft.
Heavy vapors, like gasoline, tend to settle in air, but natural gas pobably just diffuses into the space it is in. It is not a single gas, so there is a range of molecular weights. The kinetic energy of the molecules bouncing off each other tends to randomize the distribution, so you tend to get a fairly even mixture.
If she smells it, it is there, and I would find and eliminate the problem somehow, even if it's only to show her that you care.
thanks for the info.. jim.....
thanks everyone, i used the old soap and water test and found that the flexible gas connection was leaking where it was attached to the cut off valve... the gas would stay in the cabinet below the cook top and i guess a little at a time would come out... replace the flex connector... i see that at ace hardware the owner had only stainless steel connectors, he ways that is the code now.. the old one was brass, the house is 30 yrs old.. bet Home depot still has the brass pipes, if not code in our area they dont know or care being a national firm that sells all over the country... i guess this is why sometimes the customers complain when they buy something at home depot and the building code people in their area tell them that is not up to code???? thanks for the help...
Please do #1.
It might be just a dirty gas gate. The Gas man will be no problem. Houses exploding is.
Martin
hmmm, that's a new one on me, ie, HDepot stocking non-code items. of course here, the buyer could be from 7 or 8 different counties. the brass is probably costlier, maybe the hardware guy is blowing smoke? are you in earthquake country?
did the orig fail? how? age should have little to do with the longivity of these assy's. --Loren
Hmm.. Oxygen is O2, or about 32 per molecule... N2 = 28, Ar = 40. CH4 = 12 + 1*4 = 16, so it's actually lighter than air. The smell, however, is a mercaptan and one molecule of sulfur alone is much heavier than air (mercaptans contain some sulfur).
- Depending on where you are, you might have more ethane (C2H6) in your gas, that will be heavier than air. I wonder how long it would take for all this to settle, if at all...
Tim
-- In the immortal words of Ned Flanders: "No foot longs!" Website @
a residential built-in cooktop?(!) i don't believe he ever described the exact failure, it sounded to me like the installer screwed it up. btw, where did all this talk of "work harden" come from? crappy import brass is more likely.
SS is required in Califoria, at least in earthquake country, not because it is superior to brass except for tensile strength. the idea is that the flex connector will not part as easily as brass when the appliance falls thru the floor.
i am not critical of zoning or building codes, but this is rcm and erroneous conclusions need to be questioned, imho. --Loren
And lo, it came about, that on Sat, 13 Sep 2003 00:48:33 GMT in rec.crafts.metalworking , "Leo Lichtman" was inspired to utter:
"fairly even mixture" - doesn't that sound like a requirement for a fuel-air explosive detonation?
If the mixture is right. IIRC, methane has a pretty good range, so it is possible. Bet it'd take a while to fill up to minimum mixture though.
Tim
-- In the immortal words of Ned Flanders: "No foot longs!" Website @
Hi,
- In "Readers' Digest" a few years back, maybe ten years or more, was a story about a little accident that hardly saw the newspapers at the time, SHHHHHHHHH!
- Some little hollow out in the country in upstate NY had a litle gas leak emergency. The main trunk line, for I think it was the Columbia Gas Company (natural gas I think) developed a high pressure leak, but nobody noticed it. I guess the main line doesn't get the additive to smell leaking gas. It filled the hollow over several hours at nightime, then eventually it got ignited. I remember reading houses burnt, people died. I did a GOOGLE last night but came up empty. I would think "Readers' Digest" would have a look up archive to back issues.
- This is what I remember about the article, though my memory of it may be a bit clouded as to the facts.
- Anyway, maybe somebody here can enlighten us to the real story. And if natural gas is lighter than air, why did it settle in the hollow, if in fact it was natural gas?
- Daubie ========== re: - Natural Gas for stove - Group: rec.crafts.metalworking Date: Fri, Sep 12, 2003, 7:56pm (EDT+4) From: snipped-for-privacy@noname.com (jim) i have a cooktop that is supplied with natural gas.. wife always smells gas leaking.. i cant smell anything from all the years of smoking..... is natural gas heavy(goes to the ground like gasoline) or does it float away up like some other gases(helium)??? thanks for a reply.. i am gonna go the old soap and water route to see if i can find the leak if there is one.......
1973 here in London, an excavator caught the sensor line on the out feed from a subdivision regulator station. With zero pressure feedback to the regulator, the distribution system pressure was allowed to rise to the station input pressure. This produced foot high pilot flames among other interesting effects. IIRC about a dozen houses got eliminated. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
Hi,
- I did a little bit of digging and found this, which is probably the town upstate I read about.
- Here is the little town in upstate NY and I guess it was a pipeline of liquid propane, NOT natural gas. Sorry for the mis-direction. From what I remember of chemistry, propane would settle low as to being heavier than air. The "Readers' Digest" article, if you can find it, is an interesting read. =3D=3D=3D=3D North Blenheim, NY (3/13/1990) =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Google Search: North Blenheim,NY+gas+pipeline
- In "Readers' Digest" a few years back, maybe ten years or more, was a story about a little accident that hardly saw the newspapers at the time, SHHHHHHHHH!
- Some little hollow out in the country in upstate NY had a litle gas leak emergency. The main trunk line, for I think it was the Columbia Gas Company (natural gas I think) developed a high pressure leak, but nobody noticed it. I guess the main line doesn't get the additive to smell leaking gas. It filled the hollow over several hours at nightime, then eventually it got ignited. I remember reading houses burnt, people died. I did a GOOGLE last night but came up empty. I would think "Readers' Digest" would have a look up archive to back issues.
- This is what I remember about the article, though my memory of it may be a bit clouded as to the facts.
- Anyway, maybe somebody here can enlighten us to the real story. And if natural gas is lighter than air, why did it settle in the hollow, if in fact it was natural gas?
- Daubie =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D re: =A0=A0- Natural Gas for stove =A0=A0- Group: rec.crafts.metalworking Date: Fri, Sep 12, 2003, 7:56pm (EDT+4) From: snipped-for-privacy@noname.com (jim) i have a cooktop that is supplied with natural gas.. wife always smells gas leaking.. i cant smell anything from all the years of smoking..... is natural gas heavy(goes to the ground like gasoline) or does it float away up like some other gases(helium)??? thanks for a reply.. i am gonna go the old soap and water route to see if i can find the leak if there is one.......
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