Gas Go Boom!

[BigFish]

Whats up with all these home explosions?? Coincidence? NH this morning, Somerset last week, 2 others earlier this winter??? Any thoughts?? Aging gas lines?? Glad I have oil......though you do not have to have gas to have your house explode....it can travel from the street along the water pipes and into your home with the same results!

[BOSOX]

Old pipes and heaving gound. The frozen ground acts as a barrier for the gas, not letting it dissipate and forcing it back to the house. Tis' the season. At least I'm sitting on a new line.

[Raven]

at all these spots,,,,, all had people notice the smell of gas

but few report it to the police or gas company

and even less people do inspections ........after it is reported

[bassackward]

When I was in college in the late 80s, I had a summeer job at Bat State Gas in Springfield with one of my buddies. They paid us $5-6 per hour, but our job was in the Corrosion Engineering Department. Basically, all we did was take a voltmeter and test the voltage in the pipe to ground. I believe, that if a number of houses in a neighborhood all showed poor results (I can't recall a good from bad reading), a crew would be called to reinstall anodes, welded to the main supply line out near the street. The anodes purpose was to help inhibit corrosion of the pipes.
I wonder how well that monitoring has been going or has it been ignored. I would assume, there is a lifetime expectancy for these black iron pipes, anodes or no anodes. If the state put them all in in the same general time period, we may be seeing the aging process catching up to us, similar to all the bridges that have been failing inspections.
Now the utility companies can raise our costs to fix a problem they should have been expecting and had a plan for all along.

[BigFish]

Black iron pipes corrode amazingly fast in the ground......no surprise here they are having problems!

[5/0]

These explosions will help the reduce the price of natural gas