Piedmont Natural Gas installs its first vertical gas main
NASHVILLE—Nashville is growing, with Piedmont Natural Gas currently supplying 185,000 customers in Middle Tennessee. “We are seeing customer growth of around 65 new customers added to our system every week,” Eddie Davidson, state government affairs director for Piedmont Natural Gas, told local news station WKRN.
Not only is Nashville growing, but it’s growing up. Davidson noted that city growth is leading to taller buildings, requiring inventive natural gas solutions. “We have actually built our first vertical natural gas main in a development that’s taking place in Nashville right now,” he told WKRN.
Piedmont’s first vertical natural gas main is in a building known as City Lights, a seven-story luxury condominium with 71 residential units that is under construction in downtown Nashville, just south of the bright lights and music of Broadway’s honky-tonks. A grand opening is scheduled for this month.
Benjamin Davis, Piedmont’s manager of gas field operations for Nashville, told American Gas that going vertical was “uncharted territory” for the utility, presenting the engineers and contractors with unique challenges.
“The biggest challenge we had was coming up with the ventilation system,” Davis said. “We worked with the builder to create an innovative mechanical ventilation system, which uses a rooftop fan to continuously draw air up through the building—24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
It was also a challenge to determine the best way to install the pipe. “It’s 4-inch steel running vertical through the parking garage and up to the seventh floor,” Davis said. “But we had to figure out how we deliver gas from Point A to Point B—and do it all in the safest manner possible. We are used to putting pipe in the ground. So, we had to figure out how to manage the constructability of it.”
Without the option of installing a vertical gas main, Davis believes City Lights would have had no choice but to go 100 percent electric.
“We’ve learned a tremendous amount with this first project,” Davis told us. “Piedmont now has standards and specifications for this kind of project. When the next developer comes in, we can provide them with experienced guidance as they plan their project.”
Davis expects those standards and specifications to be essential in the months and years to come, as Nashville continues to expand. “With land at a premium in this part of town, it’s not likely that a developer is going to build a one-story building,” he said. “They’re going to build 20-, 30-, 40-story buildings. I do think we’ll enter into agreements to install vertical gas mains in other projects.”