Track_ShovelInstallation
š»š¼šššššāNahā¦ everything is fine there, itās even glow to spice up your mood a little bit
St3althHey if itās keeping you warm then it must be working correctly
zqwzzleāBuild a man a fire, and heāll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and heāll be warm for the rest of his life.ā
Did you know that babies born underwater can spend their entire lives down there?
Relevant username.
What are those equipments?
They look like a gas furnace and a hot water tank. My first thought was "Why are they connected? ", because I thought the tank had its own heating element. My second thought was āArenāt those water lines? How does a water line become incandescent?ā
MentalEdgeMaybe when it contains superheated steam?
bizarrolandSome part of me believes that water cannot get so hot that it would cause metal to Glow.
I would be happy to be proven wrong.
I mean, unless you're saying that the pipe is heating the water inside of it? Which at that temperature that water would be expanding to over a thousand times its size and would probably blow that line to smithereens.
Steam has no limit to how hot it can get. Until it eventually transitions into plasma of course. By then the oxygen and hydrogen would have separated, I imagine. Then itās no longer water.
Superheated steam was a problem in some steam locomotives, as running the water level too low would allow the boiler to reach temperatures that would compromise the integrity of the metal.
Only liquid water has the boiling point as a ālimitā.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/715701/how-hot-can-steam-be
Apparently 3,000 C might be the limit, but idk.
I don't trust it entirely because it is a stack exchange website, there's not any hard evidence to back up the claim.
Yeah, donāt know the specifics, but at some point the thermal energy will start knocking the molecules down into atoms.
Both glowing portions are natural gas pipes. Perhaps itās somehow ignited inside the pipes and is super heating them but also somehow NOT travelling outside the two glowing sections and burning the house down???
I donāt know, but Iād like to think I would shut everything off and run away until it demonstrably hadnāt exploded rather than take a picture!
Pretty sure its a natural gas powered water heater, so that would be the gas supply line. As to the incandesance, no clue.
r00tyThe only way that immediately springs to mind is so unlikely to happen. It requires multiple faults/mistakes.
1: The chassis of one of the two units became live (connected to "hot" for you Americans) but was also not grounded in any way.
2: The chassis of the other WAS grounded and created a circuit for the current to flow.
3: There was no RCD (GFCD or whatever you guys call it) on the circuit.
In this way, that pipe would be the only thing connecting the two devices, and the resistance is causing a huge amount of heat (just like an incandescent bulb, or a heating element does by design).
Probably other possibilities, but it's just the first thing I could think of that could potentially produce this result. But, that's a lot of safety features to have either failed or just simply not been in place for this to be possible. So, frankly I hope I'm totally wrong.
SparkyEven if that happened, wouldnāt the pipe handle a lot more current than normal house wires, or even the main ones connecting the building to the grid. I assume the pipe would be thick enough that the wires in your walls would be glowing long before the pipe itself was.
I would have thought so, but I think it depends on how thin the skin of the pipe is. I would also have expected a breaker to trip under that much load. But, based on that happening, I'd not be surprised if there are bypasses and/or broken breakers.
When we moved into the house we're in now, the RCD (GFCI) didn't work at all. I pressed test, nothing. Had the electrician over to change it. He tested the actual actuation using earth leakage. Nothing. So, faults can happen too.
I want to be wrong, though. Because that's a pretty bad state to get into, I think.
TEMU particle accelerator
gedaliyahHey, thereās particles, they are accelerating. You got what you paid for.
CatoblepasNormal person reading that: particle accelerator from TEMU
Me: oh god, there are TEMU particles??
Mood wiring
Nice water-cooled setup!
Specs?
Specs?
This man exploded 3 seconds later, those are gas lines
KingJalopy Iām sure the water put it out.
Jo MiranāHome come with a 50 Gallon gas water heater upgraded with RGB lines for an extra 10 FPS.ā
Looks like it can run doom
Situation Normalā¦
This happens when the metrical goes out in a house. Usually the waterlines will handle it, but if the house has pex the ground will go through the gas lines.
Especially if a high voltage line comes down on a gas meter for whatever reason.
Definitely run away and call professionalā¦ everyone i guess.
Would killing the main breaker at least prevent the heating of the pipes so that the expert isnāt walking into a potentially dangerous situation?
Iām a little concerned killing the main breaker might result in a sudden temperature change that might fracture the gas line. Of course if you turn the gas off you might get fried.
I think in this case the power heating the pipes is not coming from this houseās electrical service, so killing the main breaker probably wonāt help.
I read that this happened due to a downed power line. Unfortunately, killing the main breaker would not do anything.
AniviaThis would have also been prevented if the electrical install included an RCD. It would have tripped instantly when the neutral gets disconnected
Better yet to just have a bond to the gas and water pipes. In this instance, any current introduced to the plumbing has a direct connection to ground, which will allow current to flow freely and trip the breaker.
Iāve never seen pex running into a house from the street/ground. Itās always been copper up to the water meter at the very least and itās code (in NJ at least) to put grounding wire there.
linearchaosIām in a new development. Itās all plastic.
We found out a while ago that plumbing pipes arenāt the best way to ground a house for a variety of reasons, and this is why ufers (grounding to foundation steel) and ground rods are now the NEC standard. Also, this is why bonding wires are important as well. If the plumbing were bonded to a proper dwelling ground system, the current would find a direct path to ground and trip the responsible breaker, instead of using the gas lines as a big ass resistor and creating the light show we see here.
Shouldnāt everything be grounded through the panel as well? I know I have a ground wire running out to a copper plate in the ground next to my house and my understanding was that if the neutral goes that would serve as the path to ground. Is this house missing that feature or am I wrong?
While it looks scary as fuck, wouldnāt it not actually explode unless the gas pipe melted through? Thereās no oxygen in the fuel, so it canāt combust. I guess as the gas heats up, itās also possible the for the tank or lines to spring a leak.
Either way, Iād be nopeing out and calling emergency services.
unless the gas pipe melted through
That looks pretty damn likely imminent to meā¦
I think youāre right. I was curious, so I looked it up.
The melting point of copper is 1,085Ā°C, and judging from this chart, its definitely getting close:
You ever see gas hookups in the US?
We use black pipe for most of the run. Cast Iron. The actual hookup itself is a flexible pipeā¦SS or Aluminum I think. Been a long time since I had gas. Sometimes they have like a rubbery-epoxy-ish coating but I assume thatās now quite gone and stinky.
Oh, huh. Thatās interesting. Iām from the great white north, and our gas hookups are copper from what Iāve seen. If this is indeed iron, then the melting point would be higher: ~ 1,540Ā°C.
Interestingly that colour temperature chart is supposedly fairly consistent across different metals.
Tbh I donāt know why we donāt use copper. I imagine because itās more difficult to fuck up threaded and doped connections as opposed to soldered ones.
Def not cast iron, cast iron is used for waste pipes and itās brittle you could never get threads on cast iron. Itās actually steel even if we call it black iron. A lot of newer houses will run solid pipe from the main to a central location and build a manifold with corrugated steal (flexible pipes) run to the terminal points.
Correct. Natural gas canāt be over 15% to burn.
When this was posted on Reddit recently, someone claimed this was caused by a fallen power line that made contact with a gas line. So, power flowing into the house through gas pipe and back out through equipment grounds, heating up lower resistance gas pipes in the process.
Well thatās truly fucking terrifying
This makes no sense at all.
Why would only these two specific pipes get hot, so hot to glow, but not the other lines connected to it? And not the fittings around it? Itās all copper, so even if the power itself doesnāt heat them up, why would being connected to an extremely hot pipe heat it up. Since itās you know copper and being good at transferring heat is what itās known for.
And why would the lower resistance part be the part that get hottest? Low resistance means less loss, so those parts would in fact be the coldest of all.
Plus thin walled copper pipes canāt get so hot they glow without melting or at the very least lose all structural integrity and break.
And a downed power line with a short to ground would almost immediately turn off. Itās when there isnāt a direct line to ground those things are dangerous. As soon as it shorts, it gets turned off at the source to prevent further damage, fire and not cause issues upstream.
Either itās Photoshop or someone has wrapped led lighting around some pipes.
Both of the lines that are lit up are flexible aluminum couplings. Theyāre required in some areas as the final connections to the appliances. Theyāre in line with cast iron gas pipe and fittings. They are much more thin and way better at conducting heat.
Source: former HVAC tech
Thanks for the clarification, pipes look like copper but might be cast iron.
Still doesnāt fit with the explanation, aluminum has more resistance than copper, but not that much more. The resistance of cast iron is an order of magnitude higher than aluminum. So it would still be the lowest resistance in the circuit and thus the coolest part.
And cast iron is pretty good at conducting heat. Not as good as copper or aluminum, but still pretty good. Weāve been using the material to make pans and pots for cooking because of itās thermal properties. So the heat wouldnāt just stop at the fitting, but continue on at least some ways.
Moreover itās physically impossible to get aluminum hot enough to glow like this and still keep itās shape. It melts at 600 degrees C, well below the point where something gets red hot, let alone yellow like this. If the aluminum were to be this hot, it would be in a puddle and at risk of burning.
Sorry, I meant to type higher resistance. On my water heater, the equivalent part that is glowing in the picture is a really thin flexible corrugated gas pipe that surely can carry much much less current than the iron gas pipe feeding it before it went really high resistance. I could totally see it glowing like this with enough current.
My gas pipe to the house comes out of the ground inside a plastic protective pipe sleeve, so I can imagine it possibly not having enough of a low resistance path to earth to trip one of the cutout fuses on the primary distribution line. Granted, mine also has a big ground wire bonding it to the house ground, which I would think would help hereā¦
/shrug I was just sharing what I read. It was supposedly the explanation as to why local breakers on the house didnāt trip.
The flexible pipes are normally stainless steel. The main gas line is steel with thick walls so this seems plausible to me. Stainless steel has higher resistance than steel and is so much thinner.
Holy shit that must be some freak combination of factors. Thanks for sharing!
I'm back on my BS š¤ŖELI5 anyone?
Pumpkin-spice gas for the holidays
Time for a shower!
āIāve got a buddy who can do the gas and the 'leccy. Super cheap.ā