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In misc.consumers.house wrote:

Pete C. wrote:

I was in the northeast. I never had gas service, but I recall hearing
numerous reports on the news over the years of various areas having gas
service interruptions for various causes. In a large city vs. smaller
suburban areas it's probably a less frequent occurrence, but when it
does occur it probably affects more customers.

You are in dream land. I live in NJ and have neve had a gas
interruption. I have had plenty of electric interruptions though.
Just last week I was without power for 7 hours. Had gas the whole
time. So, why worriy about gas, when electric is already an order of
magnitude more prone to outage?

But when natural gas does go out, its a big pain in the rear. Its out for
longer and requires someone to come inside your home to get it turned back
on.

For the vast majority of folks, they are far more likely
to lose electric power, and they don't have generators, which puts them
out of commission.

Why don't they have generators? Certainly loosing power can be more than
an inconvenience since you can have significant losses from frozen pipes
in cold weather and lost food in hot weather. A small generator is cheap
insurance against those losses.

Because it just aint' worth it. Like last week. My power was out from
10pm till 5am. No big deal. And that was one of the longest
interruptions in the last 25 years that I've had. And let me see,
what's easier? Replacing $150 worth of food in the slim chance that it
MIGHT spoil, or putting in a transfer switch, generator, and
maintianing a fuel supply for it? BTW, my fuel of choice would be nat
gas. But since you don't like that, tell us about how you keep a fresh
supply of fuel safely stored? How do you rotate it? Since you're
worried about nat gas exploding, how about the gas for a generator?

I have a generator. I don't have a transfer switch but I have my furnace
on a twist lock plug I can plug into an alternate outlet powered by my
generator. I also have generator powered plugs near my fridge and sump
pump. Fuel supply maintenance means dumping the generator gas cans in
the cars twice a year and filling the cans again. I found that the
generator didn't do any good powering the furnace when the gas was out.

So, why worry about the far more remote possibility
of a gas outage?

Because they are not "far more remote" unless you are in a large city.

BS. Gas outages are very few. If you never had it, how would you even
know? By reading the newspaper about the rare occurance where a
construction crew hits a line? Even then, it;s likely out for a few
hours, not days. Compare that to electric, where a summer storm can
put it out.

I live in MA. A few months after moving into my house I called
the gas company (Keyspan) to report an outage. I was rudely told
"the gas company doesn't have outages, you want to call the electric
company because your power must be out." I informed them I was talking
to them on a cordless phone, I was well aware that my lights were on
and I'd like to speak to a supervisor. I was finally told someone
would arrive between 8am and 4pm and I had to be home because they
wouldn't touch anything without me being home. Two calls later and
a guy shows up at 6:30pm thinking my gas valve had been shut off and
padlocked for non-payment. Even with the help of someone back in
the office he couldn't locate the street side shutoff to see if
someone had shut it off. After 20 minutes he finally unscrewed my
meter from the house and got nothing. He unscrewed the street side
and got blasted by high pressure gas. He used the house side
shutoff valve just before the meter and then replaced the meter.
He then came into my house and lit the pilot light on the furnace
and water heater because I was obviously too incompetent to light
them although I had to tell him how to light the furnace because he
couldn't follow the little stick diagram. He also had to verify
that my dryer and stove were electronic ignition because I was
obviously too incompetent to know that either. I wasn't too
impressed.

Last winter a large section of a town in eastern MA (Lexington, Concord,
or Acton I think) lost gas for 3-4 days of single digit temperatures.
Lots of people had to drain their pipes as best they could as they were
forced to evacuate their homes.

Luckily I haven't had any gas issues in the last 5 years and I now have
a wood stove that will keep the important rooms of the house 60 degrees
warmer than the outside temperature.