DIYbanter - View Single Post - Massive Natural Gas Explosion "Flips" a House

Smitty Two

In article ,
wrote:

What gets me, is that there is no device to kill the gas flow when a
leak occurs. They highly regulate these 20lb propane tanks with these
new valves they started using some years ago. Those valves are
supposed to stop the flow where the gas flow exceeds a normal amount,
(such as opening the valve with nothing connected). You'd think that
natural gas supplies would have something similar at the meter,
whereas a busted pipe would cause the system to shut down. There are
so many regulations on everything else these days, but natural gas
seems to have been passed by. You'd also think they could design a
sensor such as a smoke detector that would beep when gas is detected.

I was renting a house twenty years ago, up on a hill. The meter was down
by the street, so there was at least 1000 ft. of pipe feeding the house.
I was using, at the time, about $15 worth of gas every month. One day I
came home and found a note on my doorknob saying the gas had been turned
off. Called to find out that the meter reading had indicated about $1800
worth of usage in that month.

My landlord and a handyman type spent the next day digging up the
hillside, tracing the pipe as it zigzagged along. They kept cutting it
in sections and pressure testing each one until they found the leak. I
think the gas company gave him about a fifty percent discount on the
bill just to be charitable.

I'm not a fan of legislation that protects people from their own
carelessness, or isolates everyone from every single thing that could
possibly happen to them. (A local lady was reaching for a package of
tortillas in the supermarket a few years ago and the whole pile came
down on her head. She sued the market, the stockboy, and the
manufacturer of the tortillas. Now, if I had been the judge, I'd have
sentenced her to a public "stoning" with tortillas.) But, maybe an auto
shutoff on new gas meters should be considered, with older ones
grandfathered in.