Black Pipe

Let me ask you a question:

Have you ever heard of a plumbing supply house that had a shortage on black pipe? How about one that doesn’t know what a thread taper is? I have been plumbing for 17 years and never had this experience, but please let me tell you my story.

We just had to run some gas lines……..

So let me give you an idea of what we had to do on this particular job. The job was supposed to be a simply and easy connect to the main truck gas line and connect a dryer , stove and a water heater. The job required around 200′ feet of 3/4′ black pipe and we decided that if we drew it out and measured the job we could save time and have a home center cut and thread the pipe for us, so basically we could just whip it all together.

Diving deep down into the plumbing isle…………

So now were in the plumbing isle at this home center we won’t mention by name because that’s not really what this is about but moving on we decided to get all the black fittings we needed first and place them on the orange cart and then we were going to get the nipples we needed. Oh but wait, let me explain another thing here. We went on the supply houses website the night before and saw that they were supposed to stock all the nipples we need in 3/4′ black pipe. So getting back to the pipe, and we are now done at this time picking out our fittings and we now decide we would get the pre-cut nipples that they were supposed to be stocked on there shelf. So as we look at the shelf were the 3 and 4 foot black pipe nipples are supposed to be, we only notice a empty slot or should I say many empty slots of were the nipples should be,  but there was none there.

Out of stock nipples now what……………..

Now that there are no stock nipples on the shelf that we were planning on buying we notice that the store has a Ridgid black pipe threading machine and that they offer to cut and thread pipe for you. So now we think that we are good to go, they have a pipe threading machine on premises and for sure they sure black pipe right? Yes, they do sell black pipe in 10′ foot lengths but guess what….Yes, they are also out of black pipe in 10″ sections as well. At this point we think we are in some la-la land were this is really not happening, I mean a billion dollar home center is out of black pipe, that’s just unheard of if you ask me. We asked one of the representatives of the plumbing department what was going on and they said that there was a “shortage of black pipe across America”. Huh? A shortage of black pipe? Well, OK if you say so, but I am sure you can imagine what our next question is going to be. “When will you be getting more black pipe”, we ask the rep, and he responds with :we can have it brought in from another store and then thread it for you in the morning”. We said “wow, that sounds great” and we decide to place the order and just plan on picking up the stuff in the morning and that will be that.

Well… That’s the only machine we got!…………………

So sure enough the next day comes along and we have someone pick up the black pipe and we get to the job and get ready to lay it all out. So we do first things first and shut of the gas main to the building and the proceed to tap into the main gas truck line with our tee, and so far everything is going smooth until we decide we need our first piece of thread black pipe. We pick one of the 4′ thread pieces of black pipe off of the floor and notice that one end is threaded and that the factory end has the thread protector on it. So we basically knew which side had been cut and threaded. So not only did the factory end have the thread protector but it also had a tapper on it. Now, if your reading this article and your not a plumber or someone that knows why you need a tapper on a thread let me quickly explain. When you tighten a black pipe fitting onto the pipe you need a tapper so that the fitting will actually tighten up and not just run out all way to the last thread. So now with that explained, we can tell you that our problem was exactly that. Someone that was using the pipe threading machine either had the machine set up wrong or did not know how to use it because everyone of the threads that they cut were not tapered at all and the fittings just ran right down. So we called the home center and they told us that they could just refund our money if the threads were bad which was nice of them but we just wanted to get the job done so we asked if they could redo the threads and they said “well. that’s the only machine we got!”, so just come in and get your money back.

The Conclusion

At this point we just decided to have the customer return the stuff ( he actually bought it himself ), and decided to remove fittings we had, put everything back like it was and then turn on the gas , check for leaks and then re-light the water heater. We learned a very important lesson that day, and it was that we should never think things will be easy, because that’s just not he way things work…….what a day right?