Service

Gas Line Installation, Repair and Leak Testing

Sizing, installation, leak survey and pressure testing for natural gas and propane piping.

What this covers

Gas Line Services in South Florida

A gas fault does not flood anything. It fills a space. A loose flare behind a range, a corroded thread under a pool heater, a buried line nicked by a fence post — each of them puts fuel into a room or under a slab where nobody can see it, and the first sign is usually a smell in a hallway or a pilot that will not stay lit. That is why the sequence on a gas call is different from every other kind of plumbing: everybody leaves the building first, the fuel supplier is called second, and the diagnosis happens after that.

Most gas work here falls into two halves. One is new piping — a range in a remodeled kitchen, a tankless water heater, a pool heater, an outdoor kitchen, or a standby generator that has to run through a storm. The other is existing piping that leaks, is undersized, has corroded, or was never permitted in the first place. The two meet more often than people expect, because adding one appliance to a system sized for three is how a house ends up with a pool heater that starves whenever the range is lit.

What separates a gas line that is right from one that merely holds pressure is arithmetic done before anything is cut. Total demand of every appliance on the system, developed length of the longest run, the pressure drop the fuel and the delivery pressure allow, and only then the pipe size out of the code table. Skip that and you get a system that passes a leak test and still cannot feed the load.

Before we arrive

Do these while the truck is on the way

If you smell gas, get everyone out before anything elseDo not touch a light switch, a thermostat, a plug or an overhead garage door opener, do not use a phone inside the building, and do not start a vehicle in an attached garage. Leave a door open behind you and keep walking until you are well clear. Do not stop to find the source — a room that already smells of gas has two of the three ingredients of a fire, and every switch in it is the third.
Call the gas supplier's emergency line from outsideThe natural gas utility or the propane supplier owns the pipe up to and including the meter or the tank regulator, runs a 24-hour emergency number, and will come out and shut the service down. Call 911 as well if the smell is strong, if you can hear gas escaping, or if anyone feels lightheaded or unwell. Make both calls standing well away from the building, not in the doorway.
Leave the meter, the tank and the valves to themDo not walk back toward the building or the tank to close anything, do not open a door to see whether it has cleared, and never use a flame or a lighter to look for a leak. If the supplier's dispatcher tells you to shut a valve you can reach from a clear distance, do exactly that and nothing more. Otherwise the shut-off is their job and waiting outside is yours.
Do not turn the gas back on yourselfRestoring gas means purging air out of the piping and relighting every appliance by its own procedure, and an unlit burner left open on a live system is worse than the leak you started with. Leave everything off, including any appliance valve that was closed, until the supplier and the plumber have been through it.
No smell, one appliance misbehaving: isolate that applianceA pilot that will not stay lit, or a pool heater that drops out when the range fires, is a diagnosis rather than an evacuation. Every gas appliance has its own shut-off valve in the same room, usually a small quarter-turn valve on the line behind or beside it, and closing it takes the suspect appliance out of the picture without shutting down the water heater and the pool as well. If you smell gas at any point while you are near it, stop and go back to the first step.
Call 811 before anything goes in the groundAny digging on the property — a fence post, a palm, a pool footing, a drainage trench — needs a locate through Sunshine 811 first, and the statutory notice period has to run before the shovel does. Buried gas here is yellow polyethylene, it sits shallower than people assume, and the tracer wire is the only reason it can be found at all.

What people call about

The situations this service is for

A smell of gas indoors, outdoors near the meter, or around a tank
A pilot or burner that will not stay lit
A pool heater or tankless unit that drops out when another appliance fires
A new range, dryer, generator or outdoor kitchen with no line run to it
A gas line uncovered or damaged during landscaping, fencing or pool work
Rust, scale or a weeping joint on exposed pipe near the meter or tank
An inspector flagging piping, bonding or a missing appliance shut-off

How the work runs

What is actually done, in order

Load calculation before layout: Every appliance on the system, plus every appliance planned, totaled in BTU per hour and set against the developed length of the longest run and the pressure drop the fuel allows. The pipe size falls out of that calculation. The most common defect found on existing systems is a line sized to whatever fit the appliance fitting.
Route survey and material selection: Black iron with threaded joints, corrugated stainless tubing where pulling through existing framing is the constraint, or yellow polyethylene with a tracer wire underground. Each has its place, and the choice follows where the line has to go, whether any of it is buried, and what the jurisdiction accepts — not what is quickest to install.
Install the parts that get skipped: A shut-off valve within reach of each appliance and in the same room. A drip leg where it is called for. Sleeving and physical protection where pipe passes through a slab, a wall plate or a stud. Bonding for corrugated stainless tubing, tied back to the electrical grounding system. Tracer wire and correct depth of cover on anything buried.
Pressure test on a gauge: New piping is isolated from appliances and regulators, pumped with air to the required test pressure and held on a gauge for the period the inspection calls for, with joints checked using solution. A gauge that moves means a joint, and that joint is found and corrected before the system ever sees fuel.
Leak survey on existing piping: On a service call rather than an installation, the existing system is walked with a combustible gas detector from the meter or tank regulator across every run, valve and appliance connector, and a manometer reading is taken at the appliance under load. That is what separates a piping leak from an appliance fault, which are two different trades.
Permit, inspection and commissioning: Fuel gas piping is permitted and inspected work, and the fuel supplier has its own separate sign-off before it will set a meter or fill a tank. Once it passes, the system is purged, each appliance is relit and its burner observed, and operating pressure is read at the furthest appliance with everything running — because a line that holds a static test can still sag once the load comes on.

Planning

What South Florida changes about this job

Natural gas distribution in South Florida is patchy in a way that surprises people who have moved here — a street in Fort Lauderdale or Hollywood may sit on a main while the neighborhood next to it is entirely propane, and large parts of the western communities have never had a gas main at all. That single fact shapes most residential gas work in the region: tanks rather than meters, buried polyethylene runs from a tank near the property line out to a pool heater or an outdoor kitchen at the back of the lot, and second-stage regulators to bring pressure down for the appliance. Add salt-laden air on the barrier islands, a water table that keeps buried steel permanently wet, the lightning density that makes bonding a live issue rather than a formality, and the run on standby generators every hurricane season.

Fuel gas piping is permitted and inspected work in South Florida municipalities, with its own scope and its own inspection stages, and the gas supplier has separate requirements before it will set or turn on a meter. Check the route for your address and building type with the building department before a date goes on the schedule.
Natural gas and propane are not interchangeable. They run at different pressures with different orifice sizing, and moving an appliance from one to the other needs the manufacturer's conversion kit for that model and a matching regulator. Where no kit exists for the model, the appliance is replaced rather than adapted.
A standby generator is usually the largest single load anyone adds to a residential gas system, and it is the one that most often forces the whole system to be resized rather than simply extended. Establish that before the generator is ordered, not after it is sitting on a pad.
Corrugated stainless tubing has to be bonded to the electrical grounding system. In a region with this much lightning that requirement is not paperwork — an indirect strike is exactly the failure it exists to prevent, and missing or improvised bonding is one of the most common defects found on existing installations.
Buried steel gas pipe in a coastal, high water table environment corrodes from the outside in. Polyethylene with a tracer wire is the normal answer underground, with a proper transition riser where it comes up and sleeving where a line has to pass through a slab.
In condominium and townhouse buildings that carry gas, the riser and the meter bank are common property while the piping inside the unit is not, so shut-offs, access and scheduling have to go through the association before the work does.

Questions

Gas Line Services — straight answers

I can smell gas. What do I do first?

Get everyone out of the building without touching a switch, a plug, a phone or a vehicle ignition, and leave a door open behind you. From outside and well clear, call the gas utility or propane supplier on their emergency line — they own the pipe up to the meter or tank regulator and they will come out and shut the service off. Call 911 as well if the smell is strong, if you can hear escaping gas, or if anyone feels unwell. Leave the meter and tank valves to them. A plumber is the second call, and no part of the diagnosis is urgent enough to be done from inside.

Do I need a permit to run a gas line?

Fuel gas piping is generally permitted and inspected work across South Florida municipalities, and the inspection normally includes a pressure test on the new piping before it is covered or connected to anything. The gas supplier then has its own separate requirements before it will set a meter, turn on a service or fill a new tank. Which department issues the permit and what the inspection sequence looks like differ between cities, so have that route confirmed for your address before anyone starts cutting pipe.

Where does the supplier's pipe end and mine begin?

On natural gas, the utility owns the service line and the meter, and the property owns everything downstream of the meter outlet — the house line, every branch, every appliance valve and connector. On propane, the tank and the first-stage regulator usually belong to whoever supplies the fuel under the tank agreement, and the buried line to the building and everything after it belongs to the property. When the fault is on their side, their emergency line is the answer, and that boundary is worth establishing before anyone starts work.

Can my existing gas line handle another appliance?

That is a calculation, not an opinion. Total the demand in BTU per hour of everything already on the system plus the new appliance, measure the developed length from the meter or regulator to the furthest outlet, apply the pressure drop the fuel and delivery pressure allow, and check the result against the sizing table. Plenty of existing systems have capacity to spare. Plenty of others were sized for a range and a dryer and cannot take a pool heater as well. Adding load without the arithmetic is how appliances start starving each other.

Why does my pool heater cut out when the range is on?

Almost always pressure drop on an undersized or overloaded run, rather than a fault in either appliance. Gas piping has to deliver a minimum pressure at the appliance while everything on the system is firing, and a line that is adequate for one appliance can fall below that the moment a second draws on it. A manometer at the appliance under load confirms it: the reading with everything off is normal and the reading with everything running is not. The fix is resizing the run, not servicing the heater.

What moves the cost on a gas line job?

How far the line runs and how it gets there — an open attic is one thing, a run under a slab, a driveway or a pool deck is another. Whether it is buried, and how much trench and restoration that means. The material the route calls for. How many appliances, valves and drip legs sit on it. Whether the existing system has capacity or has to be resized back to the meter. Whether a regulator or meter change is involved. Permit and inspection. And what the 811 locate turns up in the ground. Which of those apply is settled by the load calculation and the route survey, not by a description over the phone.

What is CSST, and does it really need bonding?

Corrugated stainless steel tubing is flexible gas tubing that pulls through existing construction the way wiring does, which makes it useful in a finished house where black iron would mean opening walls. Its thin wall is the reason bonding matters: code requires it to be bonded to the electrical grounding system so that an indirect lightning strike does not find the tubing as its path. In this part of the country that is a live risk rather than a theoretical one, and missing or improvised bonding is a routine find on existing installations.

How do you test a gas line?

New piping is isolated from appliances and regulators, pumped with air to the required test pressure, and held on a gauge for the period the inspection calls for. A gauge that moves means a joint, and the joints are checked with solution until it is found. On existing piping the survey is different: a combustible gas detector walked from the meter or regulator across every run, valve and connector, plus a manometer reading at the appliance under load. One test proves tightness; the other proves the line actually delivers.

Can gas pipe run under a concrete slab?

It is generally avoided, and where it is unavoidable the code sets out how — no joints in the concealed section, protection or sleeving through and under the slab, and the ends of the sleeve managed so anything escaping vents to open air rather than into the building. In most South Florida houses the better answer is to route around the slab, through the attic or along an exterior wall, because a line buried under a finished floor cannot be inspected and cannot be repaired without opening the floor.

Do you work on the appliance itself, or just the pipe?

The piping, the shut-offs, the connectors, the pressure test and the commissioning are gas piping work. The internals of an appliance — a range's igniters, a pool heater's control board, a generator's engine — are the manufacturer's or a service technician's scope, and the honest answer on a call is which side of that line the fault sits on. A manometer reading at the appliance settles it: correct pressure under full load with a burner that still misbehaves is not a piping problem.

Can I convert my appliance from propane to natural gas?

Only with the manufacturer's conversion kit for that specific model, and only where one exists. The two fuels have different heating values and arrive at different pressures, so the orifices and the appliance regulator have to change with them. Running an appliance on the wrong fuel without conversion produces either a starved flame or an over-fired one, and both are dangerous. Where no kit is made for the model, the appliance gets replaced rather than adapted.