The council are relaying our pavements - contractor rips up our gaspipe - boiler goes out (well it would !). Transco come along, and say they cannot just re-connect to the existing 1.25" plastic wrapped steel gas pipe into our house as their policy is to replace with polyethylene.
Team comes to slide 20mm up the pipe - hit an elbow under my shed - dig hole - connect to 20mm convoluted - get that round elbow. Inside team come along to connect pipe to meter - say flow too large gives too high a pressure drop need larger pipe.
Outside team come back - lay 25mm pipe up to hole - I move shed - they continue in 25mm to meter. Inside team come along to connect pipe to meter - say flow too large gives too high a pressure drop need larger pipe.
Outside team come back - lay 32mm pipe. Inside team come along to connect pipe to meter - say flow too large gives too high a pressure drop need larger METER !!!!!
OK it's a big detached house - 7 bedrooms - the current meter is a U6 (ie 6 cu.m./hr) which is largest 'domestic' and Transco say we need a 'U16'.
Transco say I have to ring Powergen (my gas supplier) to ask Transco to upsize the meter. This I do - they take the call and tell me someone will be along today. Having hung arround all day I ring them back - "oh no you shouldn't have been told that - you need to ring another number " This I do - they say "Oh you have to fill in forms and pay £300" At this point I hit the roof and start to consider moving my three commercial gas contracts and my domestic away from Powergen (I'm paying £12,000 a year to Powergen for gas alone across four contracts).
Powergen are 'considering what they can do . . ' and I've put out feelers with other gas suppliers !!!! Meanwhile Transco tell me I can only run my gas boiler and not any of the gas fires or hob for cooking.
Don't you love privatisation !!!!!
AWEM