How easy is it to get an incoming gas supply moved?

[Chris Hogg]

We have a bungalow with an attached 1-car garage. The room adjacent to the long wall of the garage is a utility lobby, a bit like a hallway. We would like to put a door through from this lobby into the garage. The garage floor is lower than the lobby floor, so one or maybe two steps down would be needed in the garage. For this reason it would be best to position the connecting door as far towards the back of the garage as possible, so that these steps don't get in the way of the car when it's in the garage. Unfortunately the gas supply and meter are exactly at this position on the garage wall, with the gas main emerging from the solid garage floor at this point, and the main gas tap some three feet up the wall, with the meter above it.

Moving the meter itself would be relatively straightforward, but the incoming supply pipe? The gas supply would have to be turned off somewhere, in order to disconnect and re-route the incoming pipe, but how/where would this be done? I'm not aware of any gas tap elsewhere, for example out in the road. Only the main water stop-c*ck is out there AFAIK.

Definitely not a DIY project, BTW, in case anyone is thinking I was going to attempt it myself!

[Tim+]

If Transco have a program of replacing iron mains in your area, they may replace your incoming main and meter at no cost to you. At least, that's what happened in our street. All meters were moved to external boxes.

Tim

[Tim+]

In our town we've nearly all had our meters moved outside and new supply pipes moled to the new meter positions. This coincided with an iron main replacement in the street. Might be worth enquiringly if a similar action is being done locally. You never know, you might not have to pay anything.

Tim

[Davey]

You're lucky to have mains gas. Out here in the wilds of East Anglia, between Bury St. Edmunds and Norwich, the next village has it, and we have a British gas engineer living in the village, but no gas. There used to be a gas plant in the village, but it closed down sometime around WWI. There is a summer house made out of the clinker from the plant. We still have the pipe sticking up out of the ground outside the kitchen, I have always wanted to get one of those stethoscope cameras they use for sewer inspections and stuff it down there.

[Dave Liquorice]

It's down in the town but not out here or in either of the two villages and judgng by the pall of smoke I've seen over Middleton-in-Teesdale on still winter days they don't have mains gas either.

The town had a gas plant as well, opened in 1843, can't find when it closed. I think the site is still undeveloped, there has been some housing bulit adjacent and not sure if that has no spread to cover the old gasworks site.

Ha, at least you have a pipe!

[Tim+]

First house that my parents bought in Scotland had it's own acetylene gas generating system. I think you can still buy calcium carbide. Suspect the economics might not be favourable though. ;-)

Tim

[Robin]

As you probably know, land used for town gas tends to be horribly contaminated and clearing it to modern standards horrendously expensive. Even with London property prices the Greenwich Peninsula site wouldn't have been cleaned without public money. So unless land for building is really tight I can well imagine that it might be a while yet before anyone finds the cash.

[ARW]

So the real question is "how much?"

It is as you say not a DIY job.

[Dave Liquorice]

Oh yes. Did some filming on an old gasworks site in Bristol once. Very strict instructions to wash hands well before eating, try not to get too mucky, this would have been in the 1980's before Elfin Safety really got going. IIRC they were mostly concerned about arsenic but al manner of heavy metals are about as well.

Aye, building land isn't that tight and there isn't much market either.

[harry]

Isolation. In the case of plastic pipe, they have a clamp that squashes the pipe flat. With iron pipe, they just break a joint and put a plug in the hole. The pressure is very low.

[Chris Hogg]

Thanks Harry, that's the sort of information I was looking for.

[Dave Liquorice]

Aye, even up to 10" mains.

Hum, street pressure varies.

"Recent developments include an increased use of medium pressure gas supplies to domestic premises. Low pressure operates at less than 75 mbar and medium pressure between 75 mbar and 2 bar. Different pressure control arrangements and additional competences are required for medium pressure work. In some rural areas of Scotland and Wales there are also Intermediate Pressure supplies which operate between 2 and 7 bar."

75 mbar is 1 psi, yeah a cork will stop that without too much bother.

2 bar is 29 psi or very roughy that in a car tyre. Going to take a specialist cork to stop that and a fair bit of gas will escape whilst getting access to the pipe end to shove the "cork" in.

7 bar is 100 psi...

Drove past a hole in the ground with digger next to it once, heck of whistling noise coming from hole, hefty shimmer when looking across it and an choking smell of gas. I guess the digger had just hit a gas main, emergency services were yet to arrive. That street main must have been a medium pressure one.

The regulator before the meter brings the standing pressure at the meter outlet down to 26 mbar (0.3 psi) which drops to 21 mbar when working.

[charles]

Round here, it's Southern Gas Networks, not Transco.

[damduck-egg]

Acetylene lamps made a come back for a while with modern style lamps that were in favour amongst Cavers and Potholers till quite recently. Calcium Carbide was often available in the shops that supply the bits for such pursuits. The reasonably rapid rise in LED lighting efficiency has seen the use of them much reduced in recent years and the main manufacturer Petzl stopped making them a couple of years back. As the use dwindles another source for running that old bicycle lamp dries up.

G.Harman

[Chris Hogg]

I still have my carbide lamp from my caving exploits some 50 years ago. Ex-NCB electric lamps with rechargeable NiFe cells generally replaced them IIRC but I stuck with carbide, despite the burnt knuckles when climbing electron ladders! I see carbide is still available on e-bay at a price.

[Clive George]

Lead acid Oldham miners lamps followed the NiFe cells.

Then came the FX2 and variants (NiCd F-cells). Carbide kept going because many (me included) thought the light was nicer, and for longer trips it could be refuelled. The piezo-clicker ignition on the Petzl carbide lamp was pretty good - rather less faff than the classic cap-lamp flint :-)

Now it's all LEDs with helmet-mounted batteries - way brighter, and I'm assuming they last longer too.