OT The joys of gas main renewal.

Friday last, about lunchtime, a missive dropped through the letterbox which said that the gas main was being renewed, possibly from

8am that morning and that the supply would be interrupted at some time in December to allow for repiping. Having 4 weeks ago booked to travel for December and January, I queried the likely procedure for a customer who was abroad. It seems that continuity of gas supply is not assured during this work so someone needs to be present to relight the boiler after an interruption. In my case, this is not possible as the neighbours are non technical and the local intelligent friends have all done the dirty on me and died!

So, I looked into the choices, either I put antifreeze into the heating system or I had to drain down the entire heating system. The hot/cold system has to be drained down anyway as the pipework runs through the loft, but this is easy. I did a quick sum on the amount of water involved in heating and came up with a rough figure of 250L, 150L of which is in the pipework. This requires in the region of 40L of antifreeze for about -6C protection. The cost of this was over £150, and required a lot of work to drain out and measure this amount of water. It looks like a massive drain the system down exercise and coming home to a cold house with no gas supply for some time.

The only good point is that at least I had an immediate email response from the project supervisor when I queried what was going on.

One of my neighbours has already departed for Spain for Xmas. He has no idea of what is going on!

I don't know how many houses per day the contractors expect to connect, but I have worked out that they only have 22 working days from their latest start date of the of the 30th November to the end of December and 29 houses to connect!

The lack of advance warning is appalling.

Reply to
Capitol
Loading thread data ...

This is a good opportunity to get things like internal gas meters moved to external boxes as this is usually done for free.

Richard

Reply to
Tricky Dicky

We got about 6 weeks notice, 15 months ago, they still haven't showed up ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

Where is your meter? If it's indoors, they need to get access to shut off the gas supply. If they can't get access, expect to find a hole in the pavement outside your house and that you're not connected to the new main. Of course they may plumb the new supply to a new external meter box but obviously without access they can't join it all up.

Could you not give a key to the project supervisor or leave one with a neighbour to allow access? I'm sure this situation is far from rare and that they're used to finding ways of dealing with it. I imagine that they'd like you to do all the organising regarding access and re-lighting but if that's not possible, I bet they have contingency plans.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

Why on earth would you opt for one of those ugly things?

How long does it take you to read the meter yourself and send the results online?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

More likely that someone needs to be present to *allow* the boiler to be relit - many residents would not be able to do it themselves. If you left a key with a neighbour they should be able to let the gas contractor in to do this.

Reply to
Mathew Newton

Tricky Dicky scribbled

Sod that, he doesn't want the neighbours watching when he swaps over to his own meter for the coldest months.

Reply to
Jonno

For insurance purposes, the house has Fort Knox security! There's no way they can get access to the garage mounted meter full of securely immobilised car without major damage. They are happy to do a re connect in February, just when is open to debate. The meter is built into the garage cupboard storage system, which as I built it, is designed to come apart, but only with major effort and will take a full day to do. There is no convenient mounting point for an external meter and it will cost them a fortune to replumb the piping. Their preferred minimum cost system is to internally sleeve the existing gas supply pipe.

Reply to
Capitol

Looks like you're gonna be draining down then!

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

I think there are also rules about when the gas can be turned back on after a mains disconnection. Memory says they *must* ensure that every affected property is either turned off at the meter or there are no pilot lights that could release gas but not be lit(*). If they can't verify that there is no risk of a "leak" the property has to be disconnected before the mains is turned back on.

They do (did...) exist, we had a cooker with pilot lights for each ring and no flame failure detection to shut of the gas should one of them blow out. And they did blow out and you could smell the gas released, that's how we knew one or more had blown out...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

You got a few weeks.

You can buy a couple of electric anti frost heaters. You need them anyway as the boiler could fail while you are away.

Reply to
dennis

Reminded me...

We went away in February a few years ago for two weeks. The flight was in the afternoon, so I dashed to the shops in the morning to buy something last minute, and noticed a few lorries parked around 200m away, which was strange.

We returned late afternoon on a Saturday to find the house at around 0c, and no heating. Speaking to the neighbours we found out that the gas pipes in the street have been renewed during our time away, but as our meter was indoors they were unable to connect us.

This resulted in quite impressive community spirit - we were given 3 convector heaters + 4 hot water bottles by neighbours (the kid were only

2 and 4 at the time), and we all slept on the floor, fully clothed, in the smallest bedroom in the house.

On the positive side: the gas people were back first thing the next day (Sunday) and reconnected us, but better still, they moved the meter to the outside, saving us the £800 we were quoted when booking for them to do it a month later, when the work on our extension was due to start...

Reply to
JoeJoe

No, we were informed 4 hours after the start date.

Anti frost heaters are useless in this house as the insulated plumbing runs 50ft through the loft.

The boiler has not failed once in 40 yrs, so risks are acceptable.

Reply to
Capitol

I see you had even less warning than we had. I checked out my drain down hoses yesterday and found out that I had binned them as the plastic went rigid. A quick trip to Toolstation ensued. As this is a 6 week trip the risk of frost damage is considerable. I'm resigned to the suffering. Fortunately the workshop has both a woodburning stove and a heat pump, so we can live there during the daytime when we return. It also has phone,TV and internet, so the over engineering is paying off! Looks like the immersion heater is going to come in useful also.

That means all we're going to be short of when we return is whole house heating for about a week. Reminds us of our childhood with the frost on the inside of the windows!

Reply to
Capitol

You can buy electricl heating tape to wind round pipes.

Reply to
charles

When they did my parents' road a few years ago, none of the pipes to the houses were replaced - they just relined them by blowing a 60' condom down each pipe and replacing the main stop c*ck with one which gripped the condom after they cut the end off. So only change you saw in the house was a new main gas c*ck. I don't think these guys would have done meter moves - a large number of them work fast in parallel to get the whole road done in a day or two.

You had to be present for them to turn the gas back on. If you were out, they came back the next day, or you could walk up the road to find them working on other houses. I didn't see this happen, but I imagine they will have purged the supply before allowing any gas appliances to be switched back on.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

fnarr fnarr

Reply to
Adam Funk

I always check my c*ck works on a regular basis.

Nothing worse that needing to use it in a hurry and it's broken.

Reply to
Tim Watts

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.