Muddymike wrote:
Hi Folks,
Not really a D-I-Y option but we're looking at getting an old
property connected to the gas. There is what appears to be a steel
pipe running into a corner of the property capped off. I can only
think it is an old gas service that was fitted when gas was run
along the street but never connected up.
Would the gas board (Wales and West) ever use an old pipe such as
this or would they insist on running a new plastic line or even
running a smaller plastic line up the inside of an old steel pipe?

Looks like the neighbours possibly have their gas piped up a similar
old steel pipe.

I'm waiting to hear back from Wales&West but thought someone here
might have come across the same situation.

Don't for one minute think I am recommending this course of action
but I did know a guy some 40 years ago that found a pipe just like
the one you describe in the basement of an old house he had just
bought. A few months later he had full gas central heating and hot
water running off it. He lived there for at least ten years and never
did get a gas meter!

He probably did get a meter, just not one that any gas company knew about -
they are freely available.
I've known a few people do this, a chap I knew had extensive work done on
his house, one of the jobs he did himself while all the suspended floors
were being filled in with mot prior to concreting, was to branch off the gas
main so that he had another meter coming up under his stairs, needless to
say, his CH and HW came from this, while the official meter supplied his gas
hob