Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Natural gas question

This is topic Natural gas question - Knoxville teen burned in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 07-20-2001, 01:48 PM:

Totally non-film related:

I have a question about natural gas. In Knoxville last weekend, two teenagers were walking and one decided to light a cigarette. There was a corroded gas pipe where they'd been walking so that the air around them had enough gas in it to ignite into a fireball, buring both teenagers. One had burns over part of his body and the other was totally engulfed and was burned over 90 percent of his body.

I understood that natural gas was odorless, but had a smell put into it so that it would be detectable. You'd think the teenagers would have been able to smell the gas if there were enough in the air to ignite. Are there areas in which natural gas has no odor put in?

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by John Schulien (Member # 215) on 07-20-2001, 02:13 PM:

Gads!

My first thought was that yes, smoking will kill you, but usually not that fast. I certainly hope they survive, although those kinds of injuries will most certainly be with them for the rest of their lives. How sad.

Here's a good website about the history of odorized natural gas ...
http://www.oxychem.com/products/odorants/newlondon.html

I searched the United States code (federal law) but couldn't find any law specifically requiring odorants, although there is a large body of federal regulation that may well require it.

Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 07-20-2001, 02:35 PM:

Evans:

Even if gas has an odor, an individual might not notice it, say they have bad sinuses, etc, etc.

Now, propane does have an odor.

In any case, when it comes to fuels and gases, one common way to check for leaks is with a NONOIL/NONPETROLEUM based soap/water solution--just like detecting a leak in a tire or innertube. And when doing this type of work, remove anything on your person that could cause a spark--and double check your footwear! Also remove anything from the immediate area that could cause a spark! And contact the approperiate agencies (fire department, gas-electric company, etc, etc,) if the situation is serious enough.

Also remember that when it comes to liquid fuels such as gasolene, it is not the liquid that is flamable, but the vapors emmitted from the liquid that are flamable. Hence propane and natural gasses that are in a vapor form.

Posted by Rick Long (Member # 213) on 07-20-2001, 08:56 PM:

Sad about those two teenagers.

Always remember if you do smell gas NEVER operate a light switch, the resultant spark can create an explosion.

Years ago, in Ottawa, a caretaker of a theatre smelt gas one morning, and (we deduce) turned on the light switch to the basement of the theatre to investigate the cause. It was the last thing he ever did.

The building disappeared. A set of theatre exit doors, still coupled together, buried themselves into a jewelery store across the road.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 07-20-2001, 11:03 PM:

I worked in the HVAC industry a few years ago, and worked on many gas furnaces and appliances.

LP (propane) is heavier than air. Therefore, if you have a leak situation, you will have to get close to the ground and sniff around to find it. If you can smell it, get out of the area, fast. Turn off the gas at the tank.

I was working on a furnace in a crawl-space, dodging spiders, and critters galore. This furnace ran on LP gas. The customer had complained that the gas tank had emptied over the summer. The furnace was the only gas-fired item in the house. After checking all the gas lines for leaks using the previously mentioned soap, and seeing that the tank had just been filled, I went under the house and crawled to the furnace. I could smell a slight gas odor.

I found a bad gas valve on the furnace. Normally, when the pilot light goes out, the gas valve will shut down after about 30 seconds. It will not re-open until the pilot is re-lit, and the thermocouple heats up enough to satisfy the gas valve safety control. Well, this time, the pilot, though out, was still getting gas and it was not being burned, and was all over the floor of the crawl space. The safety control in the gas valve was faulty.

I replaced the valve. This was a good hour job. I didn't notice any gas smell anymore. So, I whipped out my trusty Bic lighter and lit the pilot.
I saw a blue flame whoosh away from me and down the grade under the house to the foundation. It happened so fast that I didn't have time to react. As quickly as it happened, it was gone.

It never occurred to me at that time that the LP was heavier than air and had pooled in the lower part of the crawlspace.

Natural gas is lighter than air, and has the rotton egg odor, too. I think that it would take alot of gas build-up to ignite when a match is lit. The fumes have to be very obvious for the concentration to be heavy enough to ignite. Thats why the smell is there. Still, get out of the area. Dont turn on anything that could cause a spark. In my case, I once had to get out of a house and shut off the gas at the meter. I called the fire department from my service truck. They told me that the house would have blown up if the gas had lingered much longer. There was a crack in a fitting on a pipe in the house that caused the problem.

Believe me when I say that I have a healthy respect for any gas, oil, gasoline, kerosene, etc. all the time.

I saw the piece on the Knoxville neighborhood on the news. The flames were really bellowing out of the hole in the ground. It must have ruptured the line in the ground.

I hope those kids are going to be OK.

Posted by Dennis Atkinson (Member # 345) on 07-21-2001, 08:15 AM:

A few years ago, a welder got into his car and noticed the smell
of gas from his welding torch tank in the trunk.
He carefully rolled down the windows to air out the car.
He then, police believe, opened the glove compartment and pressed the
trunk opener.
The tank went through the roof of a neighbors house down the street,
the car exploded. Car parts all over the area, welder parts too.

Posted by John Anastasio (Member # 607) on 07-22-2001, 08:38 PM:

Natural gas (methane) has no odor. It's why miners used to carry canaries around. The canaries would drop dead from the gas even though the miners couldn't smell it, letting the miners know to get the heck outta there. It's for that reason that the gas companies add a miniscule amount of a substance called mercaptin to it so that you CAN smell it. The smell of this stuff is the most powerful odor on the planet, A few ounces of it would be enough to make an entire state sick. As far as I know, all gas companies add it to their product. Most of the eastern part of the country is serviced by a couple of major pipelines that start in Texas and end up here in NJ. You might remember that a few years ago somebody nicked one up here in Edison, leading to a really spectacular explosion and fire. The pipes are so darned big that you can stand in one. I can see them where they come out of the ground at the pressurizing station that I drive by each day. You can smell the odor even from the teeney part that leaks into the air.

Posted by Matthew Bailey (Member # 601) on 07-22-2001, 09:36 PM:

During my childhood years in Oklahoma,my dad used to work as a
communications tech at a compressor station in Mountain View
which was owned by Natural Gas Pipeline Co. at the time.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 07-22-2001, 11:32 PM:

When I was a kid, back in Pennsylvania, there was a gasline leak in our back yard. You could barely smell the gas but only when the air was still. The gas company sent a man out to our place and he used a "sniffer" to determine the amount of gas in the air. There was very little. He started poking holes in the ground and inserting the tube of the sniffer into the ground. On the very first reading he said, "Holy shit! We have a problem!" He made a couple more tests to verify his readings and then immediately "called it in". Within the hour there was a crew on-site.

I was told that there was so much gas absorbed into the ground that they couldn't safely run any digging equipment. They had to "aspirate" the ground all around our yard for a whole day before they could start work. Basically, what they did was drill holes all around the yard and inserted these "T" pipes about 4 feet down into the soil. Big, industrial compressors were hooked up to one branch of the "T" and high volumes of air were pumped through them. I was told the idea was to use the venturi effect to draw as much gas out of the ground as possible to make it safe. There were about 5 or 6 of these devices all around the place and they left them running overnight. Tests were made periodically until the "LEL" readings were low enough to permit digging.

The next morning they started digging. They found a 6 inch (or something) main pipe had rusted through and was leaking pretty badly. They "jacketed" the line with this big "coupling-thingy" that looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie. When they were all done, one of the supervisors came by to make the final tests and pronnounced the area safe again. He basically told us that we were lucky that the house didn't blow up because the gas was starting to leak through the basement walls and we didn't know it. (We had to let them into the house to perform tests.)

From this experience, I am supposing that the two kids could have found themselves in a similar situation where the ground was saturated with gas but couldn't tell because there wasn't enough of it "floating" in the air to detect. Only this time they weren't so lucky...

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 07-23-2001, 01:00 PM:

The Knoxville teen that was burned (third degree) over 95 percent of his body, Jerrod Lyon, died just before midnight on Friday.

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 07-24-2001, 12:09 AM:

Natural gas as well as the vapors of all petroleum liquid fuels that we ordinarily come in contact with are heavier that air, This is according to a chemist friend.

Posted by James Keel (Member # 835) on 08-02-2001, 09:59 PM:

And this entire thread is why my place is 100% electric. When my parents bought a house in Garland in 1965, the City gave you a Gold Medallion that went on the front of your that said some such like "100% Safe, 100% Electric Household". Neat huh?

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-03-2001, 05:11 AM:

It's a sad commentary.

This story was featured in the paper, and mentioned on all of the local TV stations when it happened. It was the lead story on several. Now Evans reports the death of the burn victim.

Where's all this coverage now? I read the paper daily, and do the news on TV nightly. Not a word has been mentioned.

Life can be short.

Gas can be tricky, but I am in no way afraid of it. As long as your safety controls are functioning, you have nothing to worry about. The same goes for electric.

We had a house in 1966 that had the Total Electric medallion on the front door. The first month that we ran the heat in the fall, the bill was $350!

I'd rather have gas heat... then oil (another messy heat,) then wood, then electric.

Posted by Tao Yue (Member # 836) on 08-03-2001, 09:19 AM:

An all-eletric household is safer than one that burns natural gas. However, electric ranges are less efficient than gas stoves (not to mention the other problems). First, there are the thermodynamic losses: heating up water to make steam, spinning up a turbine, generating electricity from it, transmitting the electricity, stepping down the voltage to household 110, and finally reaching the stove.

There are also practical considerations -- for example, lighting a gas stove generates even heat almost immediately. Starting an electric burner takes a while to heat up to maximum temperature. A pot with an uneven surface works just as well on a gas range, but loses contact area (and hence heating) on an electric burner.

If we were like France, and got 80% of our electricity from nuclear power, then perhaps the inconveniences might be worth it to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. However, coal-generated electricity is probably much dirtier overall than just burning gas directly in your home. And using natural-gas generated electricity in place of a natural gas stove is just silly.

There are no easy answers in the field of energy. At least, not until fusion becomes viable. Twenty more years, the scientists say. And as some people have pointed out, it was twenty years way back in the 1950s, too.

------------------
Tao Yue
MIT '04: Course VI-2, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Projectionist, MIT Lecture Series Committee

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-03-2001, 10:00 AM:

Fusion Energy in Rochester NY ("Back to the Future" revisited):

http://www.lle.rochester.edu/external_index.html
http://www.rochester.edu/pr/Currents/V25/V25N18/story3.html
Fusion FAQ

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 08-03-2001, 10:00 AM:

Gas will not heat a pan as hot or boil water as quickly as electric.
Gas stoves also add moisture to the air, which is good in dry climates, but not good in the subtropics.

Electric has its own set of problems. The line from my meter to the main panel is 4 ought aluminum. One day I noticed that the AC wasn't working properly and checked the breakers in the main panel and found some hot (temperature). I then began exploring the heat and found the top of the meter box hot as well. At that point, I called in an electrician friend, who opened things up. We found that the heat had melted the insulation on the mains and the wires were about 1/4" from being a direct short. Since this was before any circuit breaker, only a breaker at the transformer would have would have prevented sparking and an inevitable fire that couldn't safely be extinquished.

The electrician removed the meter and replaced the wires, using generous amounts of anti-oxidant, but I still check for the temperature of the entrance at least once a month. Actually, it is a good preventive measure to test sockets, switches, and breakers for excessive heat, especially in houses that might have some aluminum wire.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-04-2001, 10:49 AM:

All I can say about Aluminum wiring is: What were they thinking?

I went to a friends house awhile back.
While we were eating dinner, the lights flickered, went off, and popped back on.
I commented that the electric co. must be having trouble tonight, and my friend said that this was a normal thing, and that none of the neighbors had this problem. Then he said that this problem only affected certain parts of his house.
----------------
Now, before I continue, let me say this:
I am not a licensed electrician, but I DO know my way around electricity, and I know what is HOT and what is NOT in the breaker panel. Also, I never touch anything unless I have checked it with my volt-meter, which I happened to have in my truck.
----------------
If you are at all unsure about what you are doing, then DONT TAKE THE COVER OFF THE BREAKER PANEL! There is unfused voltage in there that WILL KILL!
----------------
I went to his CB panel that was installed when the house was built in the early 70's, opened the door and got a hot wire smell instantly. Several of the breakers were extremely warm to the touch.

After removing the cover, I found that many wire connections where they attach to the individual breakers were discolored and overheated or actually burned. These wires are aluminum, not copper. They actually expand and contract as they pass current, and they had losened the screw connections on the breakers. There was alot of resistance at these bad connections, and this was causing the problems.

We got a list of the ratings of all of the burned breakers and went to the parts center and bought 14 new breakers and made sure that they were compatible with aluminum wire. I also got a container of anti-oxidant (?) paste for the actual connections.

After turning off the main breakers,
I replaced the individual branch breakers, cut the burned wires back to expose bright clean ends, dipped the ends into the paste, and reconnected them to their respective screws.

Luckily, the original electrician had left several extra inches of wire inside the panel at each breaker.

After finishing up, I checked all the other connections on the branch lines.

I snugged up every wire connection with my screw driver just a bit.

After making sure that all the new breakers were in the off position, I turned on the main, and one-at-a-time, turned on each new breaker. Everything worked.

We put all the covers back in place, and congratulated ourselves on a job well done, and turned on the TV. My friend instantly noticed that there was no interference in his TV image.
I told him that something in the panel had probably been sparking just enough to affect his TV image. This scared him.

I think he was in for some real problems, or a fire, in the panel if we had not done what we did.

A few days later, he had a licensed electrician come up and check everything, including the work I did.
There were several other problems, like bad dryer outlet connections, and a burned range plug, but the wiring I repaired passed with flying colors.

He has been given a price to have the entire house rewired. I think he will do it when he gets some extra money.

The hot wires scared him pretty badly. He's already had one house fire...in the kitchen... and wants no other.

I went to his home last night. The whole house was lit up. The first thing we did was go feel around the breakers in the panel. Not one was noticibly warm to the touch.

I'm going to get a new kitchen/laundry room floor as trade for the work I did on his house. He is great at this. I just have to pay for materials.

I am sure that situations like this are the reason that AL wire is not used in home wiring anymore.

PS: My house is all copper wiring.

Sorry to veer off-topic so badly, but I had to reply.

Each energy source can hurt you if it is not properly installed/maintained.

And now, any further comments on what I said? One thing: Please dont come down on me for working on his wiring. I DO know what I am doing. If I had any doubt, I wouldn't have done anything at all.

Bruce

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 08-04-2001, 12:42 PM:

Great example and points, Bruce. I can't see why anyone would come after you for working on his wiring, especially if he had it checked by a licensed electrician afterwards. The license is only important to insure code compliance and limit any personal liability you might have had.

In addition to the problems of interference and hot spots, bad connections increase the electric bill. All of that heat is money wasted.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-04-2001, 03:33 PM:

Thanks, Jerry.

Not to toot my own horn, I rewired my entire house in 1986-87, and ran an underground feed line out to my garage so that I could work on 220v items like air conditioners.

When the inspectors came after I finished, they could find no problems with my work other than:

2 splices in the breaker box. I have since run new wire for this problem.

No ground-fault for the outlets near the sinks. This was fixed before they came back to recheck things.

One thing they questioned was my use of 12ga wire all over the house for branch circuits even though 14ga wire was correct, and the breakers were rated 15 amps.
A friend's mother-in-law set her home on fire after a major argument one night. It was a huge ranch style house with elecric heat throughout. When they were tearing it down, we removed many 30-50' lengths of 12ga "romex" style cable. We saved everything. Anything in the basement was unharmed. This saved me a fortune in wiring costs.

I got my inspection certificate. I've never even tripped a breaker!

I'll stop tooting now.

Bruce

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 08-04-2001, 06:59 PM:

"A friend's mother-in-law set her home on fire after a major argument one night. It was a huge ranch style house with elecric heat throughout. When they were tearing it down, we removed many 30-50' lengths of 12ga "romex" style cable. We saved everything. Anything in the basement was unharmed. This saved me a fortune in wiring costs."

I assume you didn't use any heat damaged wire... and I'd HATE to meet that mother-in-law...

Many places allow plastic conduit now, which I don't agree with. Full metal jacket (grin) creates fewer problems when there is a local lightning strike.

You have shamed me though, I need to go purchase some GFI sockets for the kitchen and bathroom.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-04-2001, 08:40 PM:

Jerry, the mother-in-law died in that fire. They said they could hear her screaming and laughing from outside during the height of the fire before the fire department got there. She scared me. She was a redhead. She liked guns. Brrrrrr!

None of the wire I scarfed was burned in any way.

I removed metal jacketed 'BX' cable from my house that was installed in 1946-48. The wires inside were very overheated and the insulation dry due to the previous owner using a variety of electric heaters all over the house.

I always wondered why he never blew a fuse. When I bought the place, I found out why: pennies behind the plug fuses in the 60 amp fuse box!

It's a wonder that this little wooden house is still standing! My Holmes projector doesent even make the breaker get warm! (THERE! I got it back to a film-collector reference!)

Yesterday, I called our local ABC affiliate and told them about the death of the boy burned in Knoxville, TN. by the gas leak. They were unaware, and I have not heard a mention since then on the news. I guess it's not newsworthy, or not enough viewers 100 miles away in K-town. Pathetic.

Jerry: just install a GFCI breaker in the breaker box in place of the one (s) that control the outlets you want to protect. Mine are by Bryant, and are installed in a Crouse-Hinds breaker panel. The inspectors used something that they brought with them to trip the GFCI when they came for the 2nd inspection.