Gas line installation in Los Angeles for ranges, dryers, fire pits and more

Every gas appliance has a rating in BTUs per hour, and the piping has to deliver all of them at once without the pressure sagging. We add up the range, water heater, furnace, dryer and anything new, then measure the longest run from the meter. Those two numbers decide the pipe diameter for each branch.

This is where many do-it-yourself and handyman jobs go wrong. A half-inch line that's fine for a dryer ten feet from the meter can starve a pool heater sixty feet away. Undersized piping shows up as lazy yellow flames, pilots that drop out and a tankless heater that throws error codes. If your meter itself is too small for the new total, we tell you before we start so you can request an upgrade from SoCalGas.

Inside the house, most of our runs are black iron through the crawlspace or attic, the same material that's already there. Corrugated stainless tubing is handy when a run has to snake through finished walls, since it needs fewer joints, but it must be tied into the home's electrical grounding. Exposed pipe on an exterior wall gets painted to slow rust.

Outdoors, buried gas line goes in polyethylene pipe at the depth the code requires, with a tracer wire so it can be located later and steel risers where it comes out of the ground. We route around tree roots, sprinkler mains and sewer laterals, and we plan the trench so concrete cutting is kept to a minimum.

• Gas range and cooktop stubs
• Dryer and laundry room connections
• Pool and spa heaters
• Fire pits, fire tables and patio heaters
• Outdoor kitchens and built-in barbecues
• Tankless water heater upgrades

Gas work is easiest when it's planned before cabinets and drywall go in. On a kitchen layout change, we set the range stub at the right height and offset so the flex connector doesn't kink against the wall. A shutoff valve goes where you can actually reach it once the range is pushed back.

Backyard units are a different calculation. An ADU build may add a water heater, a range and a furnace far from the meter, which can push the system past what the current meter delivers. Some owners choose separate service from SoCalGas; others go all-electric in the ADU and save the gas capacity for the main house.

Switching to a tankless unit is another common trigger. A tankless water heater can draw several times what an old tank heater did, and the line feeding it usually has to be upsized from the meter.

New gas piping needs a permit. Inside the City of Los Angeles that goes through LADBS; in Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, Long Beach and other cities, through their own building departments. We pull the permit and schedule the inspection, so you aren't left chasing paperwork.

Before the inspector arrives, the new piping is capped and pressurized with air on a test gauge. The inspector checks the material, supports, valves and test result. Once it passes, we connect the appliance, open the valve, purge air from the line and adjust the burner until the flame burns clean and steady.