Is Your Gas Piping A Ticking Time Bomb?
CSST: Ever heard of it? If not, stop what you’re doing, go down into your basement, and look for a yellow tube like the one pictured (if you value your life and your home).
Flexible gas tubing called CSST, or Corrugated Stainless Steel Tubing, has been the cause of catastrophic damage to homes and loss of life ever since it was introduced in the United States around 1990. Initially designed to prevent breakage of gas lines in earthquake regions, CSST all but eliminated the need to thread heavy black iron pipes together to serve appliances with natural gas, and was quickly adopted by plumbers trying to complete installations faster. However, the product safety testing was not thorough enough, and the consequences have been disastrous.
In 2007, a class-action settlement was granted due to the hazards associated with CSST. Here’s why:
When lightning strikes the earth, the electricity needs to dissipate, and will do so using all available paths, but especially conductive materials of low resistance. The black iron piping used for most gas lines is a great conductor of electricity, and connects to appliances that are grounded through the home’s electrical or water systems. Furnaces, fireplaces, and stoves are all connected to the home’s grounding system, and water heaters are connected to the conductive water pipes that eventually lead out to the source underground. These appliances will naturally create a path of low resistance for surge current from a lightning strike to dissipate.
CSST is made of stainless steel, which is a poor conductor with more resistance. If the lightning current is pulling through a less conductive material, the electricity will find a path of less resistance nearby. What that means is, if your CSST tubing crosses over a grounded metal part, like a duct or a plumbing pipe, there is a high probability that an electrical arc will happen between the two metals. Because CSST is flexible, it is necessarily made of very thin material, and an electrical arc can easily create a hole through the tubing, causing a gas leak in the house.
The remediation to this problem recommended by the National Fire Protection Agency is to have a qualified electrician connect a heavy-gauge copper wire from the electrical grounding system of the home to the black iron gas pipe that enters the home from the utility provider, ideally within five feet of where the pipe enters the home. This solution creates a less resistive path to ground, intercepting the surge current and redirecting it before it can reach the dangerous CSST tubing, rendering it innocuous.
CSST is still being manufactured and installed even today. There have been new products introduced with a black outer jacket that eliminates the risk of arcing if installed properly, but the yellow-jacketed tubing still requires the extra step of bonding the gas system to the grounding system of the home.
If you see yellow CSST in your home, don’t hesitate to call us! A $500-700 repair could save you tens of thousands, prevent a fire, or even save your life.
