How to Measure Tubing

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Tim Gibson, I'm going to talk to you about how to measure tubing. And the tubing comes in various styles and how it is manufactured. Now typically when you get tubing on the label it will give you an outside diameter and an inside diameter. But if you are trying to figure out what that tubing is, say it doesn't have a label on it. Then what we can do is you take a tape measure, and as long as you know that there is an inside diameter and an outside diameter, then you can line up the edge of the inside with the one inch mark, and then count how many eighths of an inch over it is. So as long as you line up with that one inch mark we can see that the inside of this is three eighths. And line up with the outside edge, the outside edge as close to the diameter as you can, and it is an half inch outside diameter. So whenever you are getting fittings or doing things like this it is important that you know the inside diameter, as well as the outside diameter, or you can get in some problems with your fittings actually fitting into your tubing. And they make fittings in all various sizes. There is really not a standard there, except that it does come in typically eighth inch sizes as far as quarter inch, three eighths, half inch, up to three quarter inch fittings. So that is how you always want to measure your tube. It is the same thing whenever you get into PVC or any other kind of pipe or larger system that you want to give it. Typically the dimensions that are given, so in this case this is a one inch pipe, and that applies to the inside diameter. So on tubing, fittings or piping whenever you buy it or whenever it is labeled you are, it's either going to be sold as an ID dimension, which stands for inside dimension. Or OD, which stands for outside dimension. And whenever you are making those connections you just want to be make sure that you are consistent, and that you get connectors, or fittings that fit either the ID or the OD. Inside dimension or outside dimension. So I am Tim Gibson, and that is how to measure tubing."