Gas piping in a Central Ohio house, era by era

Gas pipe is the one house system with two rule books and a boundary between them. Inside the house it answers to the fuel gas chapter of the Residential Code of Ohio, which covers everything from the point of delivery to the outlet of the appliance shutoff valves. Outside it, the service line and the meter answer to a utility's own filed rules and to the federal pipeline regulations Ohio adopts. This page sets out what the pipe is made of, what the rules ask of it in Ohio's own numbers, what the federal commission said about one older appliance connector, and where the boundary sits. Nothing read for it counts the gas piping in Central Ohio houses.

Last updated September 2026 · Ohio's fuel gas rule and the utility commission's pipeline rules at codes.ohio.gov, the federal commission's connector releases, the federal housing department's rehabilitation guide and Columbia Gas of Ohio's filed tariff were read September 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

What this page reads, and what nothing here measures

Ohio's fuel gas rules for a house are one rule: Ohio Administrative Code 4101:8-24-01, Fuel gas, part of the Residential Code of Ohio and printed in Ohio's own numbering from section 2401 to section 2454, without the model code's G prefix. The version read here took effect July 1, 2019, with prior effective dates of May 27, 2006, January 1, 2013 and January 1, 2016; those dates belong to the rule rather than to any section inside it. One cross-reference, at section 2422.1.2.4, still carries the model code's prefix and reads Section G2420.5. Everything else here is national or is one company's: the federal housing department's guide, the federal commission's connector statements and the excess flow valve rule are national, and the service rules quoted are Columbia Gas of Ohio's own filings.

Neighboring pages own the systems this one touches: the water supply pipe by era on the supply pipes page, the furnace, the chimney and the fuel burned on the heating page, carbon monoxide alarms on the fires and floods page, and the house's own wiring and grounding on the wiring page.

Where the house pipe begins and ends

Section 2401.1 draws the line the whole subject turns on: coverage of piping systems shall extend from the point of delivery to the outlet of the appliance shutoff valves. The definition of that starting point sits in another rule: Ohio Administrative Code 4101:8-2-01 puts the point of delivery, for natural gas, at the outlet of the service meter assembly, or at the outlet of the service regulator or service shutoff valve where there is no meter. The same rule defines the piping system as the fuel piping, valves and fittings from there to the outlets of the appliance shutoff valves.

What the chapter does not reach is stated as plainly: the gas piping, meters, gas pressure regulators and other appurtenances used by the serving gas supplier in the distribution of gas are excluded, though section 2412.1.1 asks utility service piping inside a building to meet the code's structural safety and fire protection provisions.

The pipe itself, material by material

One federal sentence carries the national picture, and it is a specification rather than a history. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's Residential Rehabilitation Inspection Guide of February 2000 says at section 7.2 that gas supply lines should be made of black iron or steel pipe, adding that some jurisdictions allow copper lines with brazed connections. It sits at that section's bullet Fuel supply, under the heading Fuel-Burning Units, General; it attaches no era to the statement, and by the guide's own disclaimer the statement is the National Institute of Building Sciences', not the department's.

Ohio's chapter is more particular. Cast-iron pipe shall not be used (2414.4.1), and steel, stainless steel and wrought-iron pipe shall not be lighter than Schedule 10, meeting the dimensional standards ASME B36.10 or 10M and one of three ASTM specifications (2414.4.2). The threads are written down as closely as the pipe: they shall be taper pipe threads complying with ASME B1.20.1 (2414.9), pipe with threads that are stripped, chipped, corroded or otherwise damaged shall not be used (2414.9.1), and Table 2414.9.2 sets the number of threads to be cut for each size, ten for a half-inch pipe and eleven for an inch and a quarter.

Copper is admitted only as Standard Type K or L of ASTM B88 or as ASTM B280 tubing, and is then limited by the gas rather than by the pipe: copper and copper-alloy tubing shall not be used where the gas carries more than an average of 0.3 grains of hydrogen sulfide per 100 standard cubic feet, printed with a metric equivalent of 0.7 milligrams per 100 liters (2414.5.3). That is a limit on hydrogen sulfide rather than on sulfur generally, and one instance of the wider rule at section 2414.5: tubing shall not be used with gases corrosive to the tubing material.

Plastic has a place and a prohibition in the same part of the chapter: polyethylene pipe to ASTM D2513 and polyamide to ASTM F2945 may supply fuel gas and are marked Gas with the standard, while polyvinyl chloride and chlorinated polyvinyl chloride pipe shall not be used to supply fuel gas (2414.6); polyvinyl chloride is left one job, regulator vent piping, which shall not be installed indoors (2414.6.3). Exposed piping other than steel is identified by a yellow label marked Gas in black letters at intervals not exceeding 5 feet, except in the room with the appliance it serves (2412.5).

Corrugated stainless steel tubing is in the chapter as a material, admitted only where it is listed in accordance with ANSI LC1/CSA 6.26 (2414.5.4). Its standard's designations come from the federal record rather than from a maker: the housing department's manufactured-home rule of December 9, 2013 incorporated ANSI/IAS LC-1-1997, Fuel Gas Piping Systems Using Corrugated Stainless Steel Tubing, and its rule of September 16, 2024 replaced that with ANSI LC 1-2014/CSA 6.26-2014, published March 2014, without saying the 1997 version was the first edition. Those national rules amend the federal construction and safety standards that apply to a manufactured home built on or after June 15, 1976, whose plumbing and bathroom sections are set out on the page on manufactured homes and trailer parks. The 2013 rule also recorded where the product already stood: it was by then permitted in all other residential construction as a gas piping system by the model codes and by state and local building codes.

What the rules ask of the pipe today, in Ohio's own numbers

Everything in the table is that one rule, in its own words. The filed rule sets Ohio's own insertions in italic type, and none of these sections is set in it. The date in the last column is the version's, not the date any requirement in it was written.

Sizing, and the routes the pipe may not take

The pipe is sized by table rather than by rule of thumb: section 2413.3 lists the methods, among them the sizing tables and equations of section 2413.4, which are the chapter's own twenty-one tables numbered 2413.4(1) through 2413.4(21) and two equations, and the sizing tables in a listed piping system manufacturer's installation instructions. Section 2413.2 tells the sizer to assume that every appliance could run at full capacity at once unless a diversity of load can be established, and to adjust the sizing above 2,000 feet of elevation, which Central Ohio is not.

Section 2415 is where the pipe may not go. Gas piping shall not be installed in or through a ducted supply, return or exhaust, a clothes chute, a chimney or gas vent, a dumbwaiter or an elevator shaft, and piping downstream of the point of delivery shall not run through any dwelling unit other than the one it serves (2415.3); concealed piping shall not be located in solid partitions and solid walls unless it is in a chase or casing (2415.4). Gas piping shall not penetrate building foundation walls at any point below grade, so it enters and leaves above grade with the annular space around it sealed (2415.6), and piping run outdoors is elevated not less than three and a half inches above the ground (2415.9). Where piping is concealed in light-frame construction the code shields it from fasteners with steel plates of not less than 0.0575 inch, No. 16 gage, excepting black steel and galvanized steel piping (2415.7 through 2415.7.3).

The valves, the trap and the drip

Every appliance has a shutoff valve of its own, and the code says where it goes: in the same room as the appliance, within 6 feet of it, and upstream of the union, connector or quick disconnect device it serves (2420.5 and 2420.5.1). A valve behind a movable cooking appliance or clothes dryer counts as accessible. Shutoff valves are prohibited in concealed locations and in furnace plenums (2420.1.2), and are located so they can be reached and protected from damage (2420.1.3). Section 2420.2 separately equips every meter with a shutoff valve on its supply side.

The sediment trap is the short capped nipple hanging below a tee near an appliance, and section 2419.4 gives it a place and a shape. Where an appliance does not have one built in, a sediment trap is installed downstream of the appliance shutoff valve and as close to the appliance inlet as practical, and it may be a tee fitting with a capped nipple in the bottommost opening, as the chapter's own Figure 2419.4 draws it. The same section exempts illuminating appliances, ranges, clothes dryers, decorative vented appliances for installation in vented fireplaces, gas fireplaces and outdoor grills. A drip is a different device and belongs to the meter: the definitions rule calls it the container placed at a low point in a system of piping to collect condensate, and section 2419.2 puts one where wet gas exists, at the outlet of the meter and at any point where condensate could collect, built so that collected condensate shuts off the flow of gas before it can run back into the meter.

The regulator, and the test before the gas

A line pressure regulator goes in where an appliance is designed to run at a lower pressure than the supply (2421.1). Regulators that require a vent are vented directly to the outdoors, with the vent designed to keep insects, water and foreign objects out, except where the regulator is labeled for use with an approved vent-limiting device (2421.3). Section 2421.4 adds that automatic excess flow valves, where installed, are listed to ANSI Z21.93/CSA 6.30.

Nothing goes into service untested. Section 2417.1 has every piping installation visually inspected and pressure tested before acceptance and initial operation; section 2417.4.1 sets the test at not less than one and a half times the proposed maximum working pressure and never less than 3 psig, and section 2417.4.2 sets the duration at not less than 10 minutes. Section 2417.2 allows air, nitrogen, carbon dioxide or an inert gas as the test medium and says oxygen shall not be used.

The bonding rule, and the numbers it goes by

Section 2411 is titled Electrical bonding, and it is three rules rather than one. It opens by asking each above-ground portion of a gas piping system other than corrugated stainless steel tubing that is likely to become energized to be electrically continuous and bonded to an effective ground-fault current path. Gas piping other than corrugated stainless steel tubing is considered bonded where it is connected to an appliance that is connected to the equipment grounding conductor of the circuit supplying that appliance (2411.1). A system containing one or more segments of that tubing has to be electrically continuous and bonded to the electrical service grounding electrode system, or to the lightning protection grounding electrode system where one is provided, through a jumper not smaller than 6 AWG copper wire or its equivalent (2411.2.2) and not more than 75 feet long (2411.2.3). The jumper connects to a metallic pipe, a pipe fitting or a tubing fitting (2411.2.1), and its connections are made in accordance with NFPA 70 (2411.2.4) with devices listed to UL 467 (2411.2.5). Tubing listed with an arc-resistant jacket to ANSI LC1/CSA 6.26 is bonded the same indirect way ordinary pipe is, and where any component of the system lacks that jacket the stricter rule applies to the whole (2411.3).

The number is the trap. Ohio prints the requirement as section 2411; the National Fire Protection Association numbers the same subject 7.12 in the 2024 edition of the National Fuel Gas Code. Its published Tentative Interim Amendment 24-1 to that edition, issued August 25, 2023 with an effective date of September 14, 2023, carries the seventy-five-foot jumper limit at 7.12.2.3 and a further subsection at 7.12.2.4, and its code-development report for the Annual 2023 cycle prints 7.12.1 for pipe and tubing other than that product and 7.12.3 for the arc-resistant jacketed kind. The number moves with the edition: the second revisions the Association published in the Annual 2026 cycle print the same requirements at 7.13.2.3 through 7.13.2.6.

Two things are absent because no source read for this page states them: when the requirement entered a code governing Ohio houses, and why it was written. The only lightning wording at any source read here is the code's own, quoted above; the code assigns no cause and this page assigns none.

The appliance connector, and what the federal commission said

The flexible line behind a range or a dryer has a federal record of its own. On October 10, 1996, in release 97-003, the Consumer Product Safety Commission warned about one older kind: older, uncoated, brass connectors, which it said had not been made for at least the past 10 years and were used most often with gas ranges, ovens and clothes dryers. The brass fittings had been soldered onto a corrugated brass tube, and the Commission said it believes the solder can fail, causing a break in the connector and a gas leak; that qualification is the agency's own. In the same release its chairman, Ann Brown, gave the Commission's count of 200 reports of these connectors failing, associated with 35 deaths and 59 injuries. It repeated the warning on September 9, 1997, in release 97-187.

The Commission's second release, 97-187, described the connectors it meant in a single line: these gas connectors are made of brass, are uncoated, and can crack or break, leading to a fire or explosion. It gives no interval at all.

Its printed alert, publication 5135, carries a qualification the releases do not: although not all uncoated connectors have this flaw, the Commission says it is very difficult to tell which ones do. The Commission never gives a year, and its two datings do not agree. The 1996 release says the connectors had not been made for at least the past 10 years; the alert, footer dated September 2010, says that to the Commission's knowledge they have not been made for more than 30 years. Both are statements of an interval rather than a date. Any year attached to them would be arithmetic rather than the Commission's fact, and this page states none.

What an appliance may be connected with today is Ohio's own list at section 2422.1, in seven items, among them rigid metallic pipe and fittings, corrugated stainless steel tubing, listed and labeled appliance connectors complying with ANSI Z21.24/CSA 6.10, quick-disconnect devices, convenience outlets and outdoor connectors. A listed connector sits entirely in the same room as the appliance it serves. The connector carries limits of its own: an overall length not exceeding 6 feet (2422.1.2.1), one connector for each appliance, and no concealment within or extension through walls, floors, partitions, ceilings or appliance housings, a prohibition with four exceptions (2422.1.2.3).

The service line, the meter, and who owns which pipe

Ohio's utility commission draws the boundary from the other side. Its gas pipeline safety rules define an operator, and the definition ends by saying the term does not include an ultimate consumer who owns a service line on the real property of that ultimate consumer (Ohio Administrative Code 4901:1-16-01, paragraph (L)). The definition does not say who owns a service line; it says only that a consumer who does own one on that consumer's own real property is not an operator under the chapter. The rule is effective May 21, 2026.

Columbia Gas of Ohio's own filed tariff, P.U.C.O. No. 2, binds that company's customers rather than the state; a house on another company's system has another set of rules. Its Section III gives the house piping to the customer, who owns and maintains it from the outlet of the meter to the gas burning appliances, and says the company has no obligation to install, maintain or repair it. That is item 6, House Piping, and it stands word for word on the sheet issued and effective December 3, 2008 and on the sheet issued and effective March 26, 2024. The meter remains the company's property and the company determines where it goes, and on its own safety page the company says it owns and regularly inspects the gas lines up to and including the gas meter. Items 3 and 4 are the meter's, and the two generations of the sheet differ on the relocation of the meter: the older sheet said that where changes in a building rendered the meter inaccessible or exposed to hazards the company would require the customer to relocate the meter setting, and the current sheet says that if the meter becomes inaccessible or exposed to hazards the company will relocate it, together with any portion of the customer's service line necessary to do so.

One rule survived the 2024 revision word for word: before service is first established, the gas piping downstream of the meter must be inspected by a local building code authority or other appropriate governmental entity, or by the company where none does it. That is item 8, Standards for Customer's Property, and the same item has the company test the piping downstream of the meter before service is established or reestablished, under Ohio Administrative Code 4901:1-13-05(A)(3).

The service line itself has a dated history and an unsettled present. The sheet issued and effective December 3, 2008 split it in two, a Service Line Connection from the main to the property line or curb valve and a Customer Service Line from there to and including the riser and the meter connection; it consists of two distinct parts, that sheet said. The sheets issued and effective March 26, 2024, filed in accordance with the commission's finding and order of March 6, 2024 in Case No. 23-0724-GA-ATA, replaced that with a single Service Line running to the meter valve, described as the connection at the main and the pipe and appurtenances necessary to extend to it. The current sheets then disagree with themselves: one paragraph says the Service Line remains the property of the Company, another that ownership continues to remain with the Customer until a repair or replacement is required. Those are paragraphs (a) and (g) of one tariff item, in one document. The page does not resolve it.

The street side of the meter is largely federal law Ohio adopts: rule 4901:1-16-03 adopts the United States Department of Transportation's gas pipeline safety regulations, and rule 4901:1-16-02 fixes the version incorporated as the one effective January 1, 2026. One of those is the excess flow valve. The regulation at 49 C.F.R. 192.383 describes it as designed to shut off the flow of natural gas automatically if the service line breaks, and requires an operator to install one on any new or replaced service line to a single-family residence before the line is activated. Paragraph (c) lists four conditions under which an operator need not install one, among them a service line that does not operate at 10 psig or greater throughout the year, and paragraph (d) lets an existing customer whose load does not exceed 1,000 standard cubic feet per hour ask for one. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration published the final rule on October 14, 2016, effective April 14, 2017; its own abstract gives the baseline the rule expanded, that excess flow valves are currently required for new or replaced gas service lines servicing single-family residences.

The commission also set a clock on a pipe nobody is using. Since August 5, 2023 each operator has had a plan for tracking and abandoning inactive service lines; a line counts as inactive when gas has not been billed on it for thirty-six months, and since October 25, 2025 an inactive line is abandoned within twelve months unless the operator finds a reasonable prospect for future use (rule 4901:1-16-04, paragraph (G)). That is the rule standing behind the capped pipe to a house that has gone off gas.

The documents outside Ohio's code, and their dates

Several sections above rest on documents Ohio did not write, and several of those exist in more than one generation, which is why each carries a date as well as a publisher.

When gas came to Columbus

Columbus had its own gas company by 1846, organized by 1850, and the city's 1892 history dates the arrival of natural gas in Columbus to December 31, 1889; neither source says when gas first reached the pipes inside a house. The city's own gas company, the arrival of natural gas and the fuel a Central Ohio house burned decade by decade are set out on the heating page and are not repeated here. Nothing read for this page describes the pipe that carried that early gas inside a house, so the material record above begins with a specification written in 2000 rather than with the era the pipe first went in.

The bathroom

A bathroom project meets this pipe in two places, each owned by another page here. The rule that keeps a gas appliance out of a bathroom is section 2406.2 of this same fuel gas chapter, set out with its exceptions on the heating page; what a water heater has to satisfy is on the hot water page. This page sets out the rules and recommends nothing.

What the record does not settle

Several things a reader might expect here are absent, because no admissible source stated them. Nothing read dates the arrival of corrugated stainless steel tubing in this country, and the date in circulation could not be traced to any maker's own dated record. Whether the 1997 version of the tubing standard was its first edition is not in the record read either. The model fuel gas code's own number for the bonding subject was not read at its own source and is not printed here.

Nothing read dates the move of the gas meter outdoors; Columbia Gas of Ohio's tariff says only that the company determines the meter's location. The tariff was read in the company's own compilations rather than at the utility commission's docket, so a sheet filed after March 26, 2024 would not have been seen. And no primary record of a Central Ohio residential gas incident was opened for this page, so it states no incident, no count and no cause.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

• Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules, at codes.ohio.gov, Rule 4101:8-24-01, Fuel gas (rule page with effective and prior effective dates), effective July 1, 2019; read September 2026.
• Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules, at codes.ohio.gov, Rule 4101:8-24-01, Fuel gas (filed rule text), effective July 1, 2019; read September 2026.
• Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules, at codes.ohio.gov, Rule 4101:8-2-01, Definitions (filed rule text), effective July 1, 2019; read September 2026.
• Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, Residential Rehabilitation Inspection Guide, sections on plumbing, electrical and heating, February 2000; read September 2026.
• Department of Housing and Urban Development, in the Federal Register, Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards, final rule, document 2013-28775, December 9, 2013; read September 2026.
• Department of Housing and Urban Development, in the Federal Register, Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards, final rule, document 2024-20545, September 16, 2024; read September 2026.
• National Fire Protection Association, Tentative Interim Amendment 24-1, NFPA 54 National Fuel Gas Code, 2024 edition, issued August 25, 2023; read September 2026.
• National Fire Protection Association, National Fire Protection Association Report: Public Input Responses, NFPA 54 National Fuel Gas Code, First Draft, Annual 2023 revision cycle, November 12, 2021; read September 2026.
• National Fire Protection Association, Second Revisions, NFPA 54 National Fuel Gas Code, Annual 2026 revision cycle, January 6, 2026; read September 2026.
• Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC Warns About Dangerous Flexible Gas Connectors Used on Home Appliances, news release 97-003, October 10, 1996; read September 2026.
• Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC Urges Consumers to Have Flexible Gas Connectors Checked, news release 97-187, September 9, 1997; read September 2026.
• Consumer Product Safety Commission, Certain Older Gas Connectors May Be Dangerous, CPSC publication 5135, footer dated September 2010; read September 2026.
• Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules, at codes.ohio.gov, Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 4901:1-16, Gas Pipeline Safety, rules 4901:1-16-01, -02 and -04, effective May 21, 2026; read September 2026.
• Columbia Gas of Ohio, P.U.C.O. No. 2, Rules and Regulations Governing the Distribution and Sale of Gas (current tariff compilation), Section III sheets issued and effective March 26, 2024; read September 2026.
• Columbia Gas of Ohio, Gas Line Responsibilities, undated; read September 2026.
• Columbia Gas of Ohio, P.U.C.O. No. 2, Rules and Regulations Governing the Distribution and Sale of Gas (compilation of April 2022, carrying the sheets of December 3, 2008), April 2022; read September 2026.
• Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules, at codes.ohio.gov, Rule 4901:1-16-03, Adoption of United States department of transportation gas pipeline safety regulations, effective June 20, 2023; read September 2026.
• Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, in the Federal Register, Pipeline Safety: Expanding the Use of Excess Flow Valves in Gas Distribution Systems to Applications Other Than Single-Family Residences, final rule, October 14, 2016; read September 2026.
• Office of the Federal Register, electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 49 C.F.R. 192.383, Excess flow valve installation, as published for September 1, 2026; read September 2026.

Common questions