Gas Line Installation and Repair in Southwest Florida

If you smell gas, get out first

Natural gas and propane are odorless on their own. Suppliers add a sulfur smell, often compared to rotten eggs, so a leak gets noticed. If you pick up that smell inside your home or business, don’t try to track it down.

• Get everyone out, pets included, and leave the door open behind you.
• Don’t flip light switches, unplug anything, start a car in an attached garage or use a phone while you’re still inside. A small spark is enough.
• Once you’re well away from the building, call 911 and then your gas utility or propane supplier.
• If you know where the meter or tank shutoff is and you can reach it safely from outside, the utility or fire department may walk you through closing it. If you’re not sure, leave it alone.
• Don’t go back in until the fire department or gas company says it’s clear.

Peoples Gas, the natural gas utility for much of this region, tells customers to call 911 first and the company second. Propane customers should call their tank supplier after 911. We don’t run an emergency dispatch service, so please don’t call us first in a leak situation. Once the gas is shut off and the scene is safe, we can come out to find and fix the problem in the piping and get it ready for inspection.

Natural gas or propane: what Southwest Florida homes actually have

Gas service around here is a patchwork. Peoples Gas runs natural gas mains in parts of Lee and Collier Counties, including areas of Fort Myers, Naples and Fort Myers Beach. Plenty of neighborhoods, though, never got a main. In Cape Coral, for example, natural gas is limited to certain corridors, and city officials have noted how many new homes are going in with propane tanks instead.

So a lot of homes in Cape Coral, Lehigh Acres, Port Charlotte, North Fort Myers and the rural edges of all three counties run on propane. That can mean a buried tank in the yard, a pair of upright cylinders against the house, or a small tank just for a grill or pool heater.

Why it matters for your piping

Natural gas and propane burn differently and are delivered at different pressures, so appliances are set up for one or the other. Many water heaters, ranges and dryers can be converted with a manufacturer kit, but the pipe sizing, regulator setup and gas supply all have to match. Before we size a new line, we confirm which fuel you have, how it’s delivered to the house and what your total load will be once everything is connected.

Who handles what

On natural gas, the utility owns the main, the service line and the meter. Piping on your side of the meter is yours. On propane, Florida licenses LP gas businesses, including dealers and installers, through the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and the tank, regulators and supply line are usually set by your propane company. We coordinate with them so the house piping and the tank side meet up correctly.

Gas line work we do

Most of our gas jobs fall into a few groups:

• New gas lines to appliances that didn’t have one, like converting an electric range or dryer to gas
• Extensions off an existing system for a new appliance or an outdoor kitchen
• Upsizing undersized piping that can’t feed everything at once
• Leak repair on interior, attic and underground lines
• Replacing corroded or damaged sections after storms, renovations or age
• Piping for remodels and additions, coordinated with our renovation plumbing work
• Rough-in and final gas piping on new construction and commercial buildouts

Every one of those starts the same way. We look at what’s already there, figure out the load and pressure, and plan a route that meets code and is practical to service later.

Water heaters and tankless units

A standard gas tank water heater doesn’t demand a lot of gas, and in many homes the existing line is fine for a like-for-like swap. We still check the connector, shutoff, sediment trap and venting each time, because older installs often have flex connectors or vent setups that wouldn’t pass today.

Tankless is a different story. Many whole-house gas tankless units are rated close to 200,000 BTU per hour at full fire, several times what a typical tank heater draws. The half-inch line that fed the old tank usually can’t carry that over any real distance. When the line is too small, the heater starves for gas when demand peaks, and you get lukewarm showers or error codes. Upgrading to tankless often means running a larger line back toward the meter or regulator, and sometimes changing the regulator setup on a propane system.

Our tankless water heater page covers that side of the job, and the tank vs. tankless guide goes into how our hard water affects that choice. For tank units, see water heaters.

Ranges, dryers, grills and pool heaters

Kitchen ranges and cooktops

Switching a kitchen from electric to gas is one of the more common requests we get. It usually means running a new line through the attic or wall, setting an accessible shutoff behind or next to the range, and connecting with a properly rated appliance connector. If the kitchen is being remodeled anyway, that’s the easiest time to do it, and it pairs well with any kitchen plumbing changes.

Gas dryers

Dryers draw modest gas, so the line is rarely the hard part. The vent is. A gas dryer has to exhaust outdoors, and long or crushed vent runs are a fire and carbon monoxide concern. We’ll point it out if what we see doesn’t look right.

Outdoor kitchens and grills

A hard-piped grill means no more swapping cylinders. Outdoor lines have to be protected from damage and sunlight, and buried sections need the right pipe and depth. Lanai and pool deck layouts can make routing tricky, so we plan the run before anyone starts cutting pavers.

Pool and spa heaters

Gas pool heaters are big burners, often among the largest loads on a residential system. If you’re adding one to a house that already has a gas water heater and range, the existing piping may not keep up. We size the line for everything running at once, not each appliance alone.

Standby generators

After the last few hurricane seasons, a lot of Southwest Florida homeowners have added whole-house standby generators. These units run on natural gas or propane, and they need a steady supply at the pressure the manufacturer specifies, even when the water heater and range are also running.

On natural gas, the utility may need to evaluate or change the meter to handle the added load. On propane, generator runtime depends on tank size, and your propane company will usually advise on that. Our part is the piping from the supply to the generator: sizing it correctly, adding the required shutoff and sediment trap, and protecting the line where it runs outside. The electrical side, transfer switch included, is handled by an electrician.

If you’re putting in a generator, our hurricane plumbing checklist is worth a read too.

CSST vs. black iron pipe

Most residential gas piping in this area is one of two materials. Each has its place, and plenty of homes have both.

Black iron (steel) pipe

Threaded black steel pipe is the traditional choice. It’s rigid, durable and hard to damage, and it’s still standard for exposed runs, meter and tank connections, and many commercial jobs. The downside is labor. Every turn is a threaded fitting, and snaking it through a finished attic or wall takes time. Outdoors, especially near salt air, bare steel will rust unless it’s coated and maintained.

CSST (corrugated stainless steel tubing)

CSST is flexible stainless tubing with a plastic jacket. It can be pulled through attics and walls in long runs with few fittings, which makes it popular for remodels and appliance additions. It has to be installed according to the manufacturer’s instructions, with that brand’s fittings, and protected where it passes through framing near nails or screws.

Why bonding matters on CSST

Thin-wall CSST can be damaged by electrical arcing from a nearby lightning strike, and Southwest Florida sees plenty of lightning. The fuel gas code requires standard yellow-jacket CSST to be directly bonded to the building’s grounding electrode system. The code calls for at least a 6 AWG copper conductor, no longer than 75 feet, attached with a listed clamp at a single point downstream of the meter or regulator. Some black-jacket, arc-resistant CSST products have different bonding requirements under their listing, and we follow the manufacturer’s instructions for whatever is installed.

If you have yellow CSST and can’t find a bonding wire near the meter or where the gas enters the house, that’s worth having checked. It’s a common miss on older installs.

Pressure testing before anything gets turned on

New or altered gas piping gets pressure tested before it’s put into service. The model fuel gas code calls for a test at 1.5 times the working pressure, but no less than 3 psig, held for at least 10 minutes. The test uses air or an inert gas such as nitrogen, never oxygen. Appliances and regulators that can’t take that pressure are isolated or disconnected first.

In practice, the inspector usually wants to see the gauge holding at the rough-in inspection, before walls are closed. After it passes, we connect appliances, purge air from the lines, light everything and check connections with leak detection solution. Your local building department may set its own test specifics, and we follow those.

A gauge that slowly drops tells us something is leaking. We track it down joint by joint rather than guess.

Permits and inspections

Gas piping in Florida falls under the Fuel Gas volume of the Florida Building Code, and new lines, extensions and most alterations need a permit from the city or county building department. That goes for Lee County, Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Naples, Collier County, Charlotte County, Punta Gorda and the rest. Fees and inspection steps vary a little by jurisdiction, but the basics are the same: a permit before work starts, a rough inspection with the pressure test, and a final inspection with appliances connected.

We pull the permit and schedule the inspections on jobs we take on. Skipping a permit on gas work can create problems with insurance claims, home sales and four-point inspections, and it means nobody independent ever looked at the work.

Digging for buried lines

Underground gas lines to a pool heater, generator or detached building mean digging, and Florida law requires calling 811 at least two full business days before you dig so buried utilities can be marked. That includes the main water line, irrigation, electric and existing gas. We handle the locate request on our jobs.

Gas safety after a hurricane

Storm surge and wind do real damage to gas systems. After a recent storm, Peoples Gas had to run safety checks, leak surveys and pressure tests on Fort Myers Beach before it could restore service, and customers had to schedule reconnection. Propane tanks can shift or float in flooding, and lines get bent or snapped when debris hits them.

Some practical rules after a storm:

• If you smell gas, see damage at the meter or tank, or the tank has moved, leave and call 911 and your gas provider from outside.
• Don’t turn gas back on yourself after the utility or your propane company shut it off. Let them restore it.
• Any gas appliance that sat in floodwater needs to be checked before use. Water heater labels typically warn against using the unit if any part has been under water, and the usual fix is replacing the control or the appliance, not drying it out.
• Never run a portable generator, grill or camp stove indoors or in a garage. Carbon monoxide builds up fast.
• Have exposed piping checked if it was hit by debris or a fallen tree, even if you don’t smell anything.

Once the supplier has made the system safe, we can repair damaged house piping, retest it and get it back through inspection so service can be restored.

Signs your gas piping needs attention

Not every gas problem announces itself with a strong smell. Some things we’d want to look at:

• A faint gas odor near an appliance, the meter or the tank that comes and goes
• A hissing sound near a line or connection
• Burner flames that are yellow, lazy or sooty instead of mostly blue
• Dead or brown patches of grass along the path of a buried line
• Heavy rust on exterior steel piping, especially on coastal properties
• Old uncoated flexible appliance connectors, or kinked and crushed ones
• Yellow CSST with no visible bonding conductor
• A propane bill or tank level dropping faster than your usage explains

A carbon monoxide alarm is a must in any home with gas appliances or an attached garage. It doesn’t detect gas leaks, though. Those are two separate hazards. If any of the above sounds familiar, call us at (239) 518-4198 or use the request form. We work across our service area, from Naples and Marco Island up through Fort Myers, Cape Coral and Punta Gorda.