One known local blaze involving CSST prompted a suit in Champaign County Common Pleas Court against a contractor, saying it was not properly installed and caused a fire when a nearby lighting strike energized the pipeline.
The Division of State Fire Marshal said in a 2009 incident report that a lightning strike near the 4283 Prairie Road, Urbana Twp., home caused the July 22, 2008, fire. The lightning energized the CSST installed above metal duct work in a crawl space under the home’s kitchen.
A hole was found in the CSST, indicating a gas leak during the fire, according to the report, but it was unclear if the hole formed as a result of the lightning strike or before.
“It appears an arc occurred on the gas line and duct work in the center of the kitchen,” the report states.
Four other homes caught on fire in central Ohio over a stormy 12-hour period last summer. Genoa Twp. Fire Chief Gary Honeycutt said he believes lightning struck at or near the homes, and the electrical charge traveled along the CSST before jumping to a less resistant pathway nearby such as a metal ventilation duct.
It then punctured a hole the size of a pencil tip in the tubing and created a gas leak that could ignite, he said.
The Champaign County complaint alleged the heating and air conditioning contractor was not certified in CSST installation and did not properly bond the CSST to the electrical panel — similar to grounding — as required by the manufacturer.
The complaint also charged the contractor failed to obtain a proper permit from the county and, as such, did not reveal the lack of bonding.
Homeowner Courtney Ferrell said the complaint was withdrawn when his insurance company settled with the contractor. He has the option to re-file by mid-2012.
Manufacturers have defended the product, which has become increasingly common in new homes since it was introduced domestically more than two decades ago, and the state fire marshal has no evidence that the product itself is faulty.
But the fires are concern enough to prompt State Fire Marshal Larry Flowers to ask fire departments to submit evidence of CSST-related fires.
No fire departments in Clark or Champaign counties have reported CSST fire incidents to the state fire marshal’s office since the evidence collection campaign began, said Ohio Department of Commerce spokeswoman Lyn Tolan.
“There is no engineering or statistical evidence at this time that concludes CSST is faulty,” she said. “As a result of concerns from some local fire chiefs in Ohio, the division of the state fire marshal established a clearinghouse for information regarding fires and CSST.”
A Springfield gas line contractor with more than 20 years of experience vehemently defended the product.
“The issue is it’s improperly sold to uneducated people,” said John Oiler of John’s Gas Line Service, who added CSST can be found at at least one area retailer. “I don’t think it should be sold in retail or wholesale stores to unlicensed and untrained people.”
Bill Gregory, a residential building inspector for the city of Springfield, agreed with Oiler that it’s a good product if installed by a properly trained person.
“(Contractors are) supposed to show a card that they attended the class,” Gregory added, but said that’s not always the case.
Gregory said inspectors check to see whether it’s been properly bonded to an electrical panel per the manufacturer’s specification, but that would assume an inspection was scheduled in their office.
City electrical inspector Larry Landis disagreed with manufacturers’ installation instructions. “Most electrical inspectors you talk to aren’t going to like (the product).”
Five brands, he said, each have a different approach to bonding, but all require them to be bonded from the point of entry into the home to the electrical panel.
“No matter where you bond it, lightning can travel back and forth across the gas line,” he said. His opinion is that bonding both ends of CSST pipe would solve any potential problems.
But as an inspector, he is required to go by building code or by the manufacturer’s installation instructions if it supersedes code, he said.
Inspectors from Springfield and Clark and Champaign counties all said they haven’t heard of other problems in their areas and said they see very little of the product used in area homes.
“A lot of people quit using it because of the bonding issue,” Landis said.
Firefighters and gas providers point out that the fires seem to occur with an unusual combination of factors — a newer building that has CSST, a lightning strike in just the right place, the puncture of the tubing and the spark to ignite the gas.
“For a homeowner or a business owner, really the problem with the product is it’s very unpredictable when it’s going to fail, and it’s a very difficult product to make safe,” said Mark Utke, a lawyer with the Cozen-O’Connor firm in Philadelphia, which is working on dozens of cases it connects to CSST.
But manufacturers say it’s the safer option compared to black metal pipe in that it’s less likely to crack, leak or cause a gas explosion because it doesn’t require as many joints to follow the shape of a building’s interior.
The tubing was developed in Japan as an alternative to rigid gas piping that could break during an earthquake, and hundreds of millions of feet of tubing have been installed in U.S. homes and other buildings, according to manufacturers.
“Of course we would like everything in the house to be safe from lightning, but that’s not a requirement,” said Bob Torbin, the director of codes and standards for Exton, Pa.-based Omega Flex Inc., one of the producers targeted in lawsuits. “And so we have to ask ourselves: Does this represent an unreasonable risk compared to other risks that you take when you occupy your home?” That’s a measurement that’s tough to quantify, he said.
In response to concerns, Omega Flex stopped offering its earlier CSST product this fall and instead is promoting tubing wrapped in a special covering intended to make it more resistant to lightning strike damage.
The American Gas Association, which represents gas providers, doesn’t think CSST is a defective product, but it has helped develop product standards and has supported the industry’s effort to educate the public about concerns and to minimize any dangers.
“It’s just a situation that could occur, just like lightning could penetrate a home and damage wiring,” said Jim Ranfone, the AGA’s managing director of codes and standards.
“It’s not a panic situation, but it’s one that I would sort of keep tabs on to make sure the system was properly bonded,” he said.
Associated Press writers Kantele Franko and Doug Whiteman contributed to this report.
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