140 CONSTRUCTION AND MANAGEMENT OF SMALL GASWORKS. 



cult to avoid occasional trouble of this sort until architects 

 and builders can be induced either to leave arrangements 

 as to size of pipes and position of meter to the gas com- 

 pany, or to take sufficient interest in the matter themselves 

 to see that the work is designed and carried out in a com- 

 petent manner. 



The piping of a building like a factory, a school, hospital, 

 or workhouse, an hotel, country mansion, or other large 

 establishment, must be arranged on lines entirely different 

 from that of a four-roomed cottage. But one frequently finds 

 long runs of small-sized pipe. And another common diffi- 

 culty is that a small service and supply system was put 

 in, in the first place, for, perhaps, half a dozen lights, and 

 that in course of time one has been added after another 

 till there are now eighteen or twenty, to say nothing of a 

 cooker, gas fires, wash-boiler or geyser. Since incandescent 

 burners have become general, complaints are received thaf 

 are really due to nothing more than dust or dirt in the 

 burners. 



A satisfactory solution of the difficulty is frequently 

 hindered by mutual recrimination and ill-feeling ; and in 

 common candour it is only right to say that the consumer 

 is not always in the wrong. There is such a thing as the 

 supply pressure or the sizes of the main pipes being at 

 fault ; and if all parties concerned work together good 

 humouredly, with a determination to get at the root of the 

 difficulty, a satisfactory settlement is greatly facilitated. 

 And this is sufficient to illustrate why I have repeatedly 

 insisted on the manager being familiar with the use of 

 the pressure gauge, and with the proper pressure required 

 for cookers, gas fires, incandescent burners, etc. Gas 

 cookers were never a general success until the gas 

 companies undertook to fix them and to provide supply 



