Flammable gas in hydronic heating system

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Lerv
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Post by Lerv » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 5:16 am

The gent was using well water, and Nat gas seeped into the H2O.

I got the call because his relief valve popped, and the gas in the water lit off, and melted the overflow (plastic ) pipe.

Took a bi of anayzing from the experts to find that one..Only case like that I had, never heard of another.

Is he on well water?

 
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anthony7812
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Post by anthony7812 » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 6:20 am

Where was the general location ?

 
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coaledsweat
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Post by coaledsweat » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 7:24 am

NG isn't really soluble in water, I'm having a hard time believing this. Do you have pics of what melted?


 
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franpipeman
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Post by franpipeman » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 7:50 am


 
Pacowy
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Post by Pacowy » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 8:12 am

This can happen naturally and doesn't necessarily result from fracking - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/1 ... 18WR022612 (see plain language summary).

Mike

 
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coaledsweat
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Post by coaledsweat » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 8:45 am

Wow, that's different.


 
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anthony7812
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Post by anthony7812 » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 9:44 am

Without going off on a long tangent, anywhere you can have mitigation of methane through well water. Its an easier path to atmosphere. Sure with any drilling nearby, without proper oversight and precaution this could happen. The scare tactic of fracking is due to lack of education. Poor concrete/cement jobs during the drilling process are the number 1 reason fracking could lead to mitigation. i know ponds in the area when we ice fish in the winter we could strike a match near the hole and have a small burst of flame. Wayy before fracking was thought about in the area.

 
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Post by lzaharis » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 10:44 am

Yup,

poor cementing jobs and air drilling from the surface to the bottom of the borehole, not sealing to a full depth of casing with cement do not help nor does not using range 3 threaded well casing from the surface does not help matters either.

You have natural seeps of methane and you have man made seeps that occur near bad bore holes that were not cemented well by filling the casing full with cement and pushing the cement out of the casing with a swabbing plug on the end of the drill string to seal the annulus of the borehole which is the area around the well casing.

The problem is that when you drill you will create breaks in the sedimentary shale and limestone rock and methane being lighter than air will naturally try to rise and go everywhere it can and eventually it will reach the surface. It is made much worse when the casing is not completely sealed with a high pressure pumped grout cement job like filling the casing with cement and pushing it into the cracks and the annulus of the bore hole and the gas will just rise through the annulus of the well casing and exit around the surface plug of cement because they would use multiple diameter sizes. of well casing to enable them to use the HDD drill rods(horizontal directional drill rods that are made to be more flexible to turn along a horizontal drill hole.

We would have gas seeps quite often underground where we were mining and we would have to block off the area and let the gas bleed out and just disperse in the mines fresh air flow or the exhaust air flow over time.

Many coal mines use a J.H. Fletcher rotary gas drilling rig mounted on a wheeled carrier that employed a horizontal large diameter drill hole using water to flush the cuttings out and also keep the bottom of the hole wet to drain methane from the coal seam as they mined around it and after the hole was bottomed out they would seal the hole with pipe and cement grout and pipe the gas to the surface and either use the gas after they purified it or sold to a pipeline company.

Several of the Jim Walter coal mines in Alabama ran into gas trouble and had to shut down. I am unsure if they have reopened as they have a very high percentage carbon metallurgical grade bituminous coal in the seam they were mining.

The very old gas wells need to be shut down and repaired to fix the leaks and I do not see that happening anytime soon as many new wells sealed with the Christmas tree control valve stack are shut down as there is too much gas and many well owners are not receiving any royalty checks so they have to deal with the consequences of spending too much money and not being able to pay for the purchases they made over time
as they do not have enough money coming from a gas royalty check anymore.

The cabot people ran into problems because they were cheap and did not spend what they should have for thick threaded range three well casing and they did poor cementing jobs to seal the wells and they did that more than once.

I have to do chores and go to town.

 
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anthony7812
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Post by anthony7812 » Tue. Aug. 13, 2019 11:27 am

Yeah haha, tried keeping it simple but what you said in a nutshell my friend.

 
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Hambden Bob
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Post by Hambden Bob » Thu. Aug. 15, 2019 8:17 am

Ditto,and a half!!

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