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Heating & Air Conditioning Building a Home Design Dilemma

Distance from wall heater to gas meter.

5 years ago

Hi guys,

I am planning to install a wall mounted space heater (gas) and the space heater will vent outside of the house and a couple feet from there, there is the gas meter.

Now I guess instead of drilling all the studs to get the gas line to where I need to install the heater, it is easer to take gas line from right after the meter.

My question:

What is the minimum distance that the gas meter should be from the wall mounted heater for California. What does the code say?

Thanks in advance,

Stay Strong

Abiel

Featured Answer

tozmo1

5 years ago

This is not a DIY project. Call a licensed HVAC person. When I lived in California and renovated my home, I found that there were A LOT of local building codes and it was very confusing even for the professionals, to figure out which apply in any situation i.e. even what seemed like a clear code had exceptions and conditions and each county and town might have something specific. And if you don't follow them and later try to sell your house, even codes that came into being after any work done, could in some cases, apply to your house and you have to bring your house up to the new code or get an exception, and on and on it goes. Plus you are working with gas, you could blow yourself up! Call a licensed professional.

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Comments (7)

User
5 years ago
Ditto, this is a job for a plumber/gas fitter. Don't fool around with gas just to save a few bucks.
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I've never seen a website for calulating gas pipe size. The important variable are the BTU load, the number of elbows or changes of direction and the length of pipe to the appliances. There are standard formulas for answering the questions you pose with the data I specified ---- youcan probably find references to that, but it may be somewhat complicated for you to use. The best bet would be to collect the data I suggested, and draw a map showing the location of your gas supply, various appliance locations with the sizes of pipe and noting the number of elbows, and see if your gas supplier will calculate the pipe sizes needed, or find/pay a skilled fitter to determine what you need. I'd ask or pay to have the calulations done for you so that someone isn't sizing your pipe by closing one eye and squinting.
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mike_home
5 years ago
I recommend you ask the code official in your local municipality what are the requirements for this installation and apply for a permit. You can't rely on licensed professionals to know or people posting on this forum.
User
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Clearance requirements are usually set by the gas company and that information is usually available online but it should only be used by you for planning; its illegal and stupid to install a gas-fired appliance yourself so you should hire a licensed installer to apply for a permit and install the heater.

If you are in Southern California here are the clearance rules:
PRO
Sina Sadeddin Architectural Design
5 years ago
This is NOT a DIY project. Just hire a professional, it won't cost that much, and you know it will be done correctly and safely.
Greg Hoffman
Original Author
5 years ago
Thanks everyone who gave input in here. I was not doing this as a DIY project to begin with. I had a contractor who works on most things and a second one who specializes on heater systems, installing centralized heating...etc. I am surprised both of them did not know the code. So I posted it here to make sure it is safe. This just tells me that I need one who knows code and how-to expertise.

Knowing how-to do something is not sufficient if it doesn't comply with the code.

Thanks all. This is handy.
sktn77a
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
"Just hire a professional, it won't cost that much, and you know it will be done correctly and safely."

Actually, it's likely to cost you upwards of $1000 plus the cost of the heater. Just make sure, for that money, the person doing it pulls a permit, gets it inspected, and knows what they are doing!

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