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.

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

Richard

Capitol wrote:

The lack of advance warning is appalling.

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

Capitol wrote:
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.


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

In article ,
Tricky Dicky wrote:
This is a good opportunity to get things like internal gas meters moved
to external boxes as this is usually done for free.

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?

--
*Filthy stinking rich -- well, two out of three ain't bad

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Wednesday, 18 November 2015 10:53:13 UTC, Capitol wrote:

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.

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.

Tim+ wrote:
wrote:

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.


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


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.

Capitol wrote:
Tim+ wrote:
wrote:

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.


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


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.


Looks like you're gonna be draining down then!

Tim

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 04:01:54 -0800 (PST), Mathew Newton wrote:

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.

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.

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...

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 18/11/2015 10:55, Capitol wrote:

The lack of advance warning is appalling.

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.

On 18/11/2015 10:55, Capitol wrote:
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.

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...

dennis@home wrote:
On 18/11/2015 10:55, Capitol wrote:

The lack of advance warning is appalling.

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.
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.

JoeJoe wrote:
On 18/11/2015 10:55, Capitol wrote:
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.

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...






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!

In article ,
Capitol wrote:
dennis@home wrote:
On 18/11/2015 10:55, Capitol wrote:

The lack of advance warning is appalling.

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.
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.


You can buy electricl heating tape to wind round pipes.

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

--
Please note new email address:

In article ,
Tricky Dicky writes:
This is a good opportunity to get things like internal gas meters moved to external boxes as this is usually done for free.

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 cock 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 cock. 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.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 2015-11-19, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

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 cock 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 cock.

fnarr fnarr

On 20/11/15 11:13, Adam Funk wrote:
On 2015-11-19, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

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 cock 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 cock.

fnarr fnarr


I always check my cock works on a regular basis.

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