Gas Line Hangers?

of course i can put those brackets up. but not in someone else’s house or building. and if i were working for a building (as their employee) where other people work, i would not do it.

here is my fear as a contractor with insurance: lets say i am on the ladder hanging a book case on the wall near that pipe. i slip, i grab the pipe as i am falling. i break the pipe and hell breaks loose. my defense to make my insurance pay is “i was not working on the gas system”. scenario two is this: i am being paid to put the brackets up on the gas pipe as some guy with insurance. i slip, i grab the pipe and fall and take the pipe down with me. all hell breaks loose and my insurance company says “you should not have been working on the gas system and we are not paying out”.

a board member on a coop would be wise to consider those two scenarios i state above before hiring an unlicensed or uninsured; if something goes wrong, other owners will go after that board member as part of the board and individually; they will be looking to nail the board member on anything. the longer someone works in this environment, the better the chance something can go wrong and the more buildings one has the greater the chance; it all grows geometrically.

as for giving advice on this board. first, people who comment on here would be wise to speak from experience and experience doing something in your home is very different than paid experience which is again different than paid experience under a seasoned and educated professional. i will add this, if we can, it is wise to ascertain who we are speaking to, the position of the OP and where they are coming from. No one on here spotted that OP might be a board member (“our building” not “my building”) and no one on here considered what that might mean. it takes experience. property managers use that experience to protect board members from exposure. wise contractors do it as they sell jobs to be sure they are directing clients to something that they can use and can afford and will add value so there will be no regrets later. we also have to think of liability going forward which homeowners do not consider; i have to consider the glass i put in doors as i am responsible for it if someone gets injured going through it 5 or 10 years down the line (hundreds of doors and i have never had a homeowner say “we had better put safety glass in, i have a three year old”. not once has anyone said that and i have to explain the law on glass and the liability to coop boards (many of whom are professionals themselves way above my pay grade). with liability it may not be what can go wrong in the moment the work is being done but what can go wrong later and the insurance investigation that follows (and when coop or condo members turn on one another and the board, people seem to have very long memories; they might be ok with a board member doing something wrong to save 3 grand in the moment; when it suits them they will use it against the board member).

this is coming from someone who has worked on jobs sites or in buildings as part of the support/management staff since the late 1970’s and has never done something that ended up in a liability claim for an employer or for myself as self employed or for a homeowner. and we all hear stories of things going wrong and we all think “how could they have been so stupid”.

as for people who think all this concern is unnecessary, that is fine. i have always tended to prefer working with people who can see the big picture and are concerned about the future.

So learn about it. If you can hang a door you can hang a pipe man.

do you know what we are like on here, challenging one another and squabbling over things we know nothing about; a coop board.

@maggie I didn’t mean to say that you should just sheetrock over work that is not safe. But in my opinion there is an acceptable way to support pipes, and either it’s there or it isn’t, and it doesn’t require a genius to fix it. If you have two plumbers do the same job, there’s a fair chance they will each find a problem with the other one’s work at the end. If you put the hangers on, the next 152 inspection could fail anyway for another reason that was present at this time, but sheetrocking up reduces the amount of work that might need to be done in the future. The real question is, is it done properly or not.

for the record: my wife does not like this reasoning: “Sometimes it is better to do nothing instead of doing the wrong thing.” its a good way to avoid or delay responsibility in a commercial space but in ones own house, it can be tough on a marriage.

> @Urbandad
> Whoever installed it obviously thought it was, so why is it not compliant?
there’s a lot wrong with this. there’s also a lot wrong with the city’s inspection process, but you cannot assume that it was obviously done right previously and just covering it up with sheet rock is not a solution.

For the record, I was just giving feedback on my experience. This whole system is a lot of interpretation unfortunately; great intentions but poor execution in my mind.
For example, a large building will get fined 10K for not completing this inspection and nothing further; there are no current follow ups. If the requirements to bring it to code are 50K or more, where is the incentive to actually get it done.
And do not get me started on commercial buildings and what is considered tenant space…

my thinking would be, in a building and with safety, it is sometimes better to do NOTHING than do the WRONG THING. At least from the perspective of the person assuming the responsibility.

Inexperienced people, workers and owners, who do not understand that, often create bigger messes than the one they had before they started. so until I knew the right thing, which MP has graciously shared with us, i would do nothing. read.

well thanks for that MP. a little late, no? or did you have to check the code yourself?

for anyone who thinks what i was saying on here was overkill in an unknown situation, this is the way professionals reason and behave in professionally managed buildings until they learn otherwise. this thinking prevents injury and protects property.

urbandad, you came on there the other day and suggested it was poor of me to suggest people use methylene chloride to strip paint, in their house, something we have been doing for years (follow the directions and all will be ok; we used to read directions). this is what i do not get, you come on here and tell someone who is probably a board member on a coop board to (possibly) break a law that could expose that person to a lot of liability and (perhaps, if something went wrong), criminal action (no i am not a lawyer; readers, take this as speculation from someone who has worked in the property management field). in my house, i would probably do just what you are suggesting if i did not think that the LL inspection had not already been entered into the system (and might that not cause a problem or raise eyebrows if one inspection has been called in and another is requested?). but to begin to suggest ways to circumvent the laws to unknowing board members in buildings that may house children and tenants is wrong; this is why they make these laws and the readers on this board, my customers, people who want to see a “better brooklyn” generally frown on business minded types like yourself and landlords (you used the word “properties” once and i would bet they are not vacation homes sitting empty for you to use on weekends) taking advantage of every situation that comes along.

MP and chris and perhaps others on here do not like what i am saying. if you and MP and others would consider what Chris Petri said about the need for a Master Plumber (and take what chris said as true, which i do) and consider that Board Members have a lot of responsibility to other unknowing people, you would realize it is very bad advice to suggest that someone use an unlicensed plumber in this situation. it just confounds me that you might be a landlord and you suggest something like this here, openly. what happens if one of your buildings blow up in three years and someone recalls seeing this here?

the “gibberish” i am writing on here is NOT hurting my business. the contrary. i would rather work for people who think like i do and it seems to be going that way and i find that people who can think of the “bigger picture” understand that it is not just about them and those people make very nice people to work for.

The City doesn’t care who provides support for pipes. I’ve worked in buildings that hired welding companies to fabricate hangers and pipe rests for their water, gas, and drain piping. There’s a chart in the NYC Plumbing Code that says steel pipe needs to be supported horizontally every 12 feet and vertically at every floor at a minimum. In practice, most plumbers seek to support piping at every 8 feet which serves to provide 2 hangers for every standard 10-foot length of pipe.

Well if it were me I would install the hangers and call for another inspection. But then again I would know what kind of hangers to use, it’s not that hard to obtain that info, but it’s not something that can be taught in a forum post.

Alternatively I would install sheetrock over the area in question making it exempt from the inspection, assuming it was indeed adequately supported. Whoever installed it obviously thought it was, so why is it not compliant? There could be many answers.

Let’s say you have a 2 family used as 1 and you want to update the cofo. Why do a dozen people need to get paid for that to happen? Well that’s how it works. Pipe hangers indeed.

i have to acknowledge Master Plumber on here because I understand exactly where he is coming from from. Experience (paid experience) has taught me that different people will more readily read and digest different things and different styles of writing. How do i know this? For a few years, I wrote training manuals in paper mills. someone had determined that what we wrote for those mill workers had to written at about a “7th grade” education level (that was the level at mills in Michigan and Wisconsin; for mills in the Deep South, it was a 5th grade education level); if i wrote what i am writing on here for the mill workers, my bosses would have said exactly what master plumber is saying; “gibberish”. at the same time, if i wrote the way i did for the mill workers on this board, many of the other readers (my target audience and the people who hire me to do work for them) might get bored by it as it is well below their education level. Our own experiences generate our own perspective and some of us have more perspective than others.

i do not wholly trust tha t MP’s criticism is not without self interest. saying it’s gibberish is way too easy; saying that is dismissive without considering content. even if politeness is not his strong point, he would be much better to point it out – even if bluntly – “this is wrong because…” than to dismiss it on its face. Because he refuses pick it apart for its content, I am suspicious of his motives (i have said other things related to worker’s right and protections that can cost a lot of us a lot of money and money always seems to be at the bottom of any problem). Keep in mind, master plumber and one other plumber have both made technical mistakes with things in their field on this board and me, the person who is not a plumber, spotted them. i was only so rude to point this out to MP some months back because of his manner. for the other person, i held it back (and he is still not aware); i’d rather hold back with them because these people are a value to this board and what one of them said, though wrong, was not really going to hurt anyone. there is something else though: Master plumber called me about 15 years ago and was talking to me about codes. I had been making and installing vanities and doing the related sink hook ups (no in wall plumbing). Master plumber tried to tell me that by code i was not allowed to do what i was doing. i corrected him and when i did he blamed it on something he had heard in some industry meetings he had been attending on (i think) Staten Island. at first i thought “wow this guy is a plumber and does not know the code” (i felt bad for him – he’d just exposed his ignorance to a guy who does woodwork). and then i realized, there was another reason for that phone call. he did not just call me to chat and he was not quite as “ignorant” as i thought he was. there was a motive and there may be a motive here.

chris, that is what op needed to hear all along. sorry i was off topic, i was trying to help them negotiate what they were trying to do short of knowing the code.

For a more on topic comment: We were just contracted for this precise work (Hanger Installation) after a client was told by their LL152 Inspecting Company they needed a Licensed Master Plumbing Company to coordinate directly with them in order to pass the inspection.
I spoke with the Inspecting Company and they said what I thought: even if the work is simple, it needs to be perfectly by code. They are signing their name on someone else’s work and will only do so with someone they trust.

and mp, that was a fair criticism. and i don’t want to read all i see either – i just had to change a head gasket on a car and every time i went to read an article about that head gasket job, they opened by explaining what a head gasket does – and if i were reading about how to change one, i damn well knew what one does and damn well know what happens when you damage one. i want to know how to do what to a piece of machinery and in a lot of trades, it is very important to focus on the work and end result; i am on both sides of this and have been for a long time, so i get that. but i am coming from a management perspective here, on this.

jane what you said to master plumber is spot on. Prior to my going college i would not read stuff like i am writing and would have thought it was gibberish. i read stuff on how to do things to things i can hold in my hands and see but hated theoretical or philosophical “non sense” and i know people who are like that today (if i had not suffered an injury when i was 18, i might still be one of them). I would not really con sider what i am saying op ed, but more theory BUT it is from experience and YES, in business what works with one person might not work for another; theory is only a framework and i am not telling anyone to risk breaking any codes here (the contrary).

this is where i separate from master plumber. with the head gasket job i mention in my reply to MP, i wanted to read more than the STEPS to doing something (i had a “trade” manual that told me the steps) and wanted to read what people who had done these jobs had to say, because people who have done things can convey little tricks that can make the job go faster (we have to pick and choose though as some may be bad advice). there is value in that and the audience i am writing for, they are highly educated, highly intelligent and are used to reading “gibberish” (i look at their bookcases when i am in their houses and i look at what they are reading; no auto repair or plumbing manuals there) , and i continually go to their homes and hear horror stories about how this went wrong or their contractor screwed this up and i literally have watched people cry, marriages suffer (and when contractors underbid a job; two marriages suffer) and the more i listen to their stories the more i learn one thing: the issues lie in the selection of the contractors and the parameters one sets for that selection. it took me years to understand WHAT was going on and HOW these mistakes were being made because the professional managers did not make them.

i shared with others on here the mistake i made on my first job (contractors don’t like to talk about the mistakes they make, at least no on here; master plumber won’t admit his mistakes) for a professional property manager. if i had made that same mistake 10 years later when i was moving to my third job in the field, my boss would have thought he had made a bad hiring decision. most of the people reading on here, and i do not mean this in an offensive way – they do what they are good at and i do what i am good at – are not even at that level i was at by the time i went to that third job; they are not at the level i was at when i went to my second job. here is the difference in philosophy: i believe in the value of open discussion and the value of ideas in this field because most of the people i share ideas with who work with their hands also understand that. But i also know there are people in the world who are against that and instead of forming talking points to what they are saying, they deride in its entirety; its a mindset and i understand where it comes from (now saying that, that is real “gibberish”, isn’t it?).

MP Thank you. I am grateful for the advice I received from you, Gennady and others on my Navien. That was a significant turning point in firing my GC.

I don’t think you’re Steve’s target audience. Steve is soothing to a segment of people here. However, forums were never set up to be containers for op-eds.

@Steve, conflicting opinions./answers and unintentional misinformation can create confusion for the inexperienced homeowner. They will not be able to read posts and figure out which statements to believe OR if something is directional vs. literal. That’s why most of the time, they should really talk to a professional in person .

@janedrew Solid points. I never read what doorsbytinkerswagon says because it’s just never worth it but some people probably do and that could sometimes be a problem. I rarely give an opinion on this forum. I try to stick to the mechanical process at hand and give advice based on how I know things to perform in the field. Chris Petri and others do the same thing. The stream-of-consciousness posting thing is exactly what’s wrong with trying to get advice on the internet.

i understood that that was not directed at me. but i am trying to tell people that they can proceed so long as they err on the side of caution (assume the answer is the worst case, most difficult and expensive way or assume a “no-go” until you know otherwise).

here is the issue with the philosophical part of what i am saying in my replies above. i am talking about something sort of abstract – management. and what i have said in how to approach the situation the OP finds him/her self in are handled in different ways by different people and its not a science. It is learned through experience and most homeowners do not have enough daily interaction with tradespeople and the sort to gain that experience. i suppose i could find a Facilities Management book and offer up what they say and cite them and then it would not sound as philosophical. and one reason why i offered up that mistake i made when i was about 25 was to bring it home to real life and say “inexperienced people make these mistakes all the time”.

i will add something here, it seems a certain mindset likes what master plumber said above and i know there is another mindset that appreciates what i say (i hear from people all the time). one of those people who “liked” what MP said, stated something that was very incorrect on here a few months back. i did not challenge him on that because i did not want to embarrass him with something in his field that he should know even though i knew enough (from my limited experience) that it was wrong; he is generally polite on here and what he said would not endanger anyone so i let it go. so i do understand what you are saying about people saying things that are wrong and yes, codes are very specific.

with your last line, and i am not criticizing you but i know this happens to people. people call a contractor and hear “it can’t be done” or it will cost some amount of money they feel is exorbitant. here is where the problem occurs when something really cannot be done or really should cost a lot of money: they begin shopping the job until they find some contractor who is less experienced and does not know he should not be doing something (i was afraid the OP would fall into that; it happens ALL the time) who will do it, often for less money than it should cost and they f it all up. i get calls from people who say, “i got ripped off by a contractor” and i ask “how much did you pay for that?” and they say some ridiculously low number. and i tell them “you did not get ripped off; you got what you paid for”.

i lot of this long winded stuff i have been explaining is stuff only contractors and people in the business understand; there was a time i did not understand it. a lot of people would save a lot of headaches if they understood the philosophy behind a lot of this but to understand what i am saying, and i suspect you do, someone has to have the ability to comprehend it and see how it applies in real life. i suspect if someone cannot comprehend what i am writing here or see benefit in it, they will just dismiss it a rubbish or gibberish or something.