gas bushings with a twist

archibald tuttle

so i'm always asking why and the closest i can come to a problem with bushings and gas is a prohibition on cast bushings most esp. changing a single size which have apparently been prone to cracking. And that they are hard to get apart which i'm not sure where that comes in on the code side. No sense fighting city hall so i've got bins stocked with reducing couples, reducing elbows and reducing Tees. save my bushings for steam and oil tanks, pretty much.

I have to imagine that whatever brittleness in cast iron started this whole thing ought to be over since we're pretty much using malleable, at least insofar as gas piping is concerned.

But my problems today are on the small end of things. got a 3/8" pilot valve and regulator and i'm going to need to take it down to 1/4" for the pilot tubing adapter. so you commonly see brass bushings in this size work and that's what i stock in 1/4 x 3/8. I don't usually have to pipe an independent pilot valve, i'm just using the tapping on the GCV , but in this two stage setup 1" vlave with adjustable regulators the only valve i could get is an industrial that V8944B1019 that offers no pilot so i'm going for a V8046C1030/U 24V pilot valve to work with the electronic ignition.

I could get a V8046C1014/U and it would be at 1/4" already although then I would have to take the 3/8" branch down before the valve. I don't have a BTU rating for the pilot burner itself on the Johnson Controls intermittent ignition. The 3/8" valve passes a lot more gas but even the 1/4" is rated 20 CFH per hour. Both of those seem a big overshot for a small pilot burner anyway although i haven't had much success finding the CFH or BTU input typical of the pilot burner assembly i'm using. I'm thinking that i'm going to need a regulator regardless of which valve i use as i don't believe there is an integral regulator with these valves.

In theory, no matter what side of the valve I could use reducing couplings and nipples but they just stick out from the pipe and make more of a lever to accidentally break off small size piping and i've got to add a regulator as well, so i like bushings in these circumstances. Is there some reason i shouldn't like them?