Cadent - gas main/to house replacement (2025 Update)

Oh dear. Try not to bring political bias into this. State run industry is just as capable of ensuring the left hand doesn?t know what the right hand is doing.

IF the same entity is not only in charge of road mending *and* cable laying AND if that entity's rewards are an inverse function of costs, then you may see joined up thinking.

The problem is you need to associate reward with performance, which state industries never have, and link up disparate organisations, which is not likely under capitalist systems and still unlikely under socialist ones

To put it simply capitalist systems don?t have the power and socialist systems don?t have the incentive to do 'joined up thinking'

Even in the case of my own house, second guessing where I might want to have a socket in ten years time has proved impossible

I ripped down a bit of ceiling to replace a fan I never left an access panel for. One days work in twenty years is less than one days work at day one to make a hatch. Until te 20 years were up.

There is a 12V transformer buried in a wall for 17 years that is still working fine.

Digging up and replacing roads is not the most expensive thing in the world.

Laying miles of ducts that may never be used is more costly

The iron barrel type was 'replace' here some time ago. Without any disturbance to the outside of my property - all done from the street and inside. I did wonder if they just fed a plastic pipe inside the iron barrel.

We had 6 months of disruption as about 5 miles of very busy road was resurfaced - with no sensible route around it and temporary lights wherever they were working. Within a couple of months of finishing, they dug it up again and installed fibre-optic cabling along the whole length, snaking from side to side - despite there being grass verge along nearly all the length!

SteveW

Temporary lights strike me as a "sensible route around".... At least compared to the 70 mile diversion we'll have when they *close* for 4 weeks the A689 for resurfacing next month. Which also clashes with one of the biggest lamb sales in the area and *the* day that the hill farmers get the majority of their income...

Bit remiss of the county highways department not to put a Section 58 order on the newly surfaced road. A Section 58 order prevents the utilties digging up a road for a period of time (3 to 5 years is normal). There are a couple of get outs though, emergency work or a new customer connection. Note the use of the singular for customer...

Cadent has recently replaced all the gas-pipes on our West London housing estate. since then, I have noticed a conciderable amount of 'Wire drawing' causing low gas pressure IE- Food taking longer to cook, situation worse if oven and hob in use at same time. tried to contact Cadent, firm simply not intersted in our problem.

Better than having your house explode. E.g.

Um, association ≠ causation. By what mechanism do you think cable drawing might be affecting your gas supply?

Tim

I'd have thought first course of action would be to get a gas fitter to do a pressure test, then check with published spec. If low you can ask Cadent to fix it, if within spec there's less you can do. It's also possible the pressure is ok but pipework in your property is marginal, and an upgrade would fix issues.

Theo

If the problem was caused by a too small diameter pipework, then a static pressure test might not show the problem, since the result would depend on the demand at that point in time. As the inadequate pipe might feed a number of houses, the demand would be known.

Yep. A pressure test at a time of peak demand is what you need. Not unknown for pipework to an area to be undersized for the required gas supply.

Still b*gger all to do with “wire drawing” though.

Tim

Is there some kind of pressure gauge that could be installed so you could check the pressure at any given time? Then you can send a photo to Cadent as evidence.

Theo