New Gas Line Installation Across Spartanburg County and Gaffney

Every gas appliance has a rating in BTUs per hour, printed on its data plate. A line has to deliver the total of every appliance that could run at the same time, over the full length of the run, without the pressure dropping below what the appliances need. Get that wrong and nothing leaks — the furnace, the water heater and the range just underperform, and usually on the coldest day of the year.

So the first thing we do is add up the house: what is on the line now, what is going on it, and what you are likely to add later. A tankless water heater is the usual surprise. Many draw close to 200,000 BTU an hour, several times a typical tank, and a line that fed the old tank happily often cannot feed the new unit without a larger pipe back toward the meter.

Sizing follows the tables in the fuel gas code, by pipe material, pressure and developed length. When the existing service is marginal we will say so before you buy an appliance, not after it is installed.

There are three common materials on a residential gas job in the Upstate, and each has its place.

• Black steel pipe (black iron) — the traditional choice. Threaded, rigid and durable. Right for exposed runs, mechanical rooms and short, straight drops.
• CSST (corrugated stainless steel tubing) — flexible yellow- or black-jacketed tubing that runs through walls, attics and crawlspaces with far fewer joints. It must be bonded to the electrical grounding system, which the manufacturer and the code both require because of lightning risk.
• Polyethylene (PE) — the yellow plastic pipe for underground runs outside the house, buried with a tracer wire so it can be located later. It never runs above ground or indoors; it transitions to steel where it comes up.

In much of Spartanburg County the gas arrives from a utility main through a meter. Out past the mains — rural Chesnee, Campobello and the edges of Cherokee County — homes run on propane from a tank in the yard. We run lines for both.

The piping itself is similar, but the two fuels run at different pressures and many appliances need a conversion kit to switch from one to the other. Any appliance going onto propane has to be set up for propane, and the tank supplier sets and maintains the regulator at the tank.

Gas Guys is a Piedmont Natural Gas Advantage Partner. If a Piedmont main runs near your house but you have never had gas, we help you through the new service install: Piedmont brings the service line and sets the meter, and we run the house piping, test it and get it inspected so the meter can be turned on.

The same goes for homes switching from propane to natural gas when a main reaches the road. We check whether the existing piping is sized for natural gas, convert or replace each appliance, and coordinate the timing with Piedmont and your propane supplier.

We can also offer financing through Piedmont Natural Gas for qualifying gas work. Piedmont decides what qualifies and sets the terms, so we go over the options with you before the job is scheduled.

Your gas utility owns the main in the street, the service line to your meter, and the meter itself. Everything downstream of the meter — every foot of pipe from the meter to every appliance — belongs to the homeowner. That is the piping we install, repair and test.

It matters for digging, too. Calling SC811 before you dig is free and it is the law, but 811 only marks the utility's lines up to the meter. A buried line we run from the meter to a detached garage, a generator or a grill is yours, and 811 will not mark it. We bury plastic gas pipe with a tracer wire so it can be found later, and we will show you where it runs.