Sorry, I meant to type higher resistance. On my water heater, the equivalent part that is glowing in the picture is a really thin flexible corrugated gas pipe that surely can carry much much less current than the iron gas pipe feeding it before it went really high resistance. I could totally see it glowing like this with enough current.
My gas pipe to the house comes out of the ground inside a plastic protective pipe sleeve, so I can imagine it possibly not having enough of a low resistance path to earth to trip one of the cutout fuses on the primary distribution line. Granted, mine also has a big ground wire bonding it to the house ground, which I would think would help here…
/shrug I was just sharing what I read. It was supposedly the explanation as to why local breakers on the house didn’t trip.
YerbaYerba@lemm.ee 2 months ago
The flexible pipes are normally stainless steel. The main gas line is steel with thick walls so this seems plausible to me. Stainless steel has higher resistance than steel and is so much thinner.