shorecat99
New Member
In considering an upgrade to some of my natural gas piping, I noticed something I would like to understand better. I just bought a new kitchen range,60,000 btu input, but did not hook it up yet as I need to have to have the gas supply moved a couple of feet. It's the end of the run so normally no big deal but in checking charts, it seems some of my piping is undersized so I'm considering the upgrade at the same time. Inside my crawlspace, I have about 20' of 1" pipe, then a 1" x 1" x 1/2" tee supplying a clothes dryer, and continuing on to a reducing tee 1" x 1/2" x 1/2". The tap supplies a water heater but then the trunk (as I call it) or continued piping which is 1/2" goes on to supply a 100,000 btu heater, then another 10' where it used to supply a built in wall oven, and another 8' for and old cooktop. The new range will replace these 2. I'm considering going back to the reducer before the house heater and upgrading to 3/4" or 1" to properly meet demand downstream but here's my concern. **I thought I had 1" service coming from my gas meter as it comes through the wall from outside as 1". Looking at the meter today, I noticed 3/4" in (which is fine because it's probably higher pressure before the meter, but then also 3/4" out of the meter. A couple of elbows and a few inches later it goes to a reducer (or in this case, it would be an enlarger) which brings this from 3/4" to 1" and then enters the house. This boggled me! Some thoughts came to mind like "a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link" or in this case, "a piping system can only supply as much as it's smallest diameter allows through". Is this normal?? Is it ok because it's only a short run at the beginning? I would think my capacity is limited to 3/4" no matter what they added to it afterward?? Sorry so long and technical but I'm big on theory and like to understand as much as possible before doing something or having something done for me. Thanks for reading! I'll check back later as I have to go to work now...