On Tuedsay a local developer drilled right through our gas main.

Before they can get get the gas flowing again they must verify, in person, that all 6,000 homes affected have turned off their gas supplies. That’s quite a big job even with 100 Engineers on the case!

But what happens if someone is out or on holiday? Well on Thursday they applied for a court injunction to allow them to break into homes where they can’t get a response. Fair enough as far as I’m concerned. We can’t all freeze our butts off waiting for Mr and Mrs JetSet to get back from 3 weeks in the Seychelles. It’ll be quite a shock for the Jetset’s when they do get back and find that they have been victims of a state sanctioned break in. Still it’s better than the Jetset’s getting back to find their pipes have frozen and poured water over their shag pile**.

Once they have done this they can then repair the damage to the pipe. Then they will have to reverse the process and individually reconnect the gas supply of all 6,000 homes.

Mrs Ampthill says that the man stood outside the site where this happened, supervising vehicle access, was getting a lot of hard stares today.
That’s what happens in towns with a Waitrose. You can wipe out 6,000 households heating and get nothing more than a hard stare***. NB this might not apply in Hitchin, I hear alot of rough stories about Hitchin

Any way no one died

c’est la vie as they say in France c’est la vie

* This isn’t rude. It refers to an error of triangulation in navigation. Cocked hats, worn by sailors, where triangular. Big cock up meant large triangulation error

** This isn’t rude either. It’s a type of carpet

*** News update, I have heard stories that things have escaleted to tutting

can they not isolate the supply out side the property?

Someone who is away is a jetset? May very well be working!

Anyway instead the gas board breaks in they use either non destructive means of entry where possible and if they need to brake a lock they replace it and leave a sticker with a number to call.

or even isolate per street .

cant believe there is only 1 cut off point for 6000 homes .

can they not isolate the supply out side the property?

dig a big hole over pipe cut pipe or crimp , put up signage and lights, and then reconnect and refill with different type of tarmac/concrete etc, or just get a locksmith out to open the door and switch off gas, or why cant they just disconnect at meter on property.

few years ago on wirral a mains water pipe burst, flooding a gas main, transco there in force for weeks, sucking water out, testing pipes etc,quite a few hundred homes, its a huge labour intensive job, as water in a gas main can cause a blockage to gas, water clears and you have a spirt of gas into a property and then a light goes on and BANG.

and in Chester on a new restraunt, plumbers connected the incoming water main to the incoming gas pipe, water flowed down the meter sending it into reverse i got told, again a huge job to drain the main.

Every gas meter has to be able to be locked out externally of the property so something isnt right there.

I say 9/10 because I could sense your teeth were clenched as you typed .
Do the jet setters live next door?

You have mains gas?
We dream of getting gas in our village.

Someone who is away is a jetset? May very well be working!

Of course. I may have been going for humour

Our gas switch is outside. Some apparently are internal. They are bringing people back in sections so no there are other cut offs. I think what they don’t want to do is repressurize the pipe when there is a risk of gas escaping into some one home via say a cooker that was left on

I say 9/10 because I could sense your teeth were clenched as you typed

Far from it. As i say no one died. Stuck this on facebook and we all had a good laugh. It’s a tougher crowd here

On the other hand knowledge is better here. How is a developer supposed to know where the gas main is. It was a yellow plastic pipe so presumably modern. They must be accuralty recorded on plans?

Bad luck John. I can email you a picture of our working boiler – you could print it off, set fire to it then all huddle round it for warmth 🙂

Anyway, I thought you’d have an Aga….

I thought you’d have an Aga

He does. It’s gas fired.

We have an internal gas cut off. 1930’s house – meter looks laf that age.

I can see why they’d need to do it – pilot lights will discharge a lot of gas over time.

have a read here http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/1600-wirral-homes-still-without-3360117

and here, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-15840536

youre entitled to 30 quids per day for being without gas it appears.

They certainly should be recorded on plans, which the developer will have a copy of.

Or am I missing the sarcasm?

I’m hoping the developer is paying for all of this.

Oh he’ll pay. Then HSE may ask to see his task paperwork and it will go downhill rapidly from there.

I used to be a postie in Colchester. While a contractor was digging up a section of road near the station, he managed to hit a gas main followed by an electric cable… the heat from the resulting explosion could be felt a good 200 yards away where I was standing….

Thanks Aracer. No sarcasm at all. My first thought was I bet it’s an old iron one that’s cracked. But of course Iron pipes are a doddle to detect. So i was wondering how you are supposed to avoid a plastic pipe? The drilling rig they are using is huge and it completely went through the pipe. I’m amazed and glad that know one hurt hurt at this point.

The story is that with the gas pouring out they then attempted to fill the hole with concrete

They must be accuralty recorded on plans?

Haha! Yes they are supposed to be, rarely are anything close to accurate IME.

It was also announced that they* were bringing in a load of electric heaters and hotplates to be distributed from an emergency centre the first evening the gas was out- then refused to distribute them to the gathered masses for fear the substation might be overloaded.
On day 2 some were allocated to “the vulnerable”

*Not sure who “they” are.

I don’t live in the affected area, no idea where it is, just share a community radio station.

If they’re anything like the plans we get from the utilities companies when designing works it’ll be something like a marker pen line, about the width of the road with caveats which essentially amount to “there may be something here, there might not be and it might be somewhere else, either way, you’re the ones responsible for finding it”.
Plastic pipes quite often have metal embedded in them to make them easier to detect but not always.

Either way, I’d not be drilling down if I had an inkling there was a gas pipe and I didn’t know exactly where it was!

I went there (maulden) on wednesday or thursday, was amazed to see over 50 transco vans on and around the village green . I’d no idea what it was all about but I felt like there was gong to be a massive explosion

Gas companies powers of entry are greater than the police. They will break in if needed. There was an explosion near me because they didn’t know sure all the properties had a proper purged gas supply.

hammyuk – Member
Every gas meter has to be able to be locked out externally of the property so something isnt right there.
POSTED 7 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

In new builds maybe.

It’s a good job all STWers are law abiding,a wander round Maulden,noting stickers on doors could provide a decent haul,for those so inclined.

My dad used to work from British Gas and the same thing happened a number of years back in the Hope Valley in Derbyshire. They had to bring in engineers from all over the East Midlands and Yorkshire

Mate of mine used to be a digger driver. One dig was next to a major pipeline that required all sorts of risk assessments and engineers with detectors confirming the pipeline position. Finally he was given the go ahead and 10 minutes into the job – clang!

Cue exclusion zones and lots of engineers with very red and nervous faces examining maps and arguing. After an age it turned out he’d hit a piece of scrap pipe that had been buried 20ft from the pipeline!

youre entitled to 30 quids per day for being without gas

sweet, how do i apply

I’m told by friends on facebook that the money just comes off your gas bill

Are your issues mainly with the broken gas main, or with shag pile carpets and your jetset neighbour?

Are your issues mainly with the broken gas main, or with shag pile carpets and your jetset neighbour?

Why do I feel like I’m lying on a couch

Happened to me, builder cracked a gas main and a water main on a Friday afternoon, by Sunday people had
Water coming out of their cookers.
And it was the same I.e every house turned off and every house turned back on and checked 100s of gas men from all over the northwest.
From memory we got a free electric heaters within a day and £150 compo in a few months

http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/gas-outage-across-bedfordshire-villages-should-be-fixed-by-the-end-of-the-weekend/story-29915775-detail/story.html#YCcikrqUPwBIhdvW.99

bet its not, put the kettle on luv

Project. As you were typing we were being reconnected! 😀

Oh and for the record. All 6000 homes had only has one isolation point. They are digging up the roads all over the place adding extra isolation valves

My final thought is I’m impressed by just how many resources were brought to bear on this problem

Project. As you were typing we were being reconnected!

The POWER OF SINGLETRACK works wonders.

The story is that with the gas pouring out they then attempted to fill the hole with concrete

🙄
🙄

About par for the course though.

About par for the course though.

Was this in the UK? Sounds like something my maintenance team would do.

A septic pipe needed a hole cutting in it, and to repair the hole, one of them put a rubber sandal over it and held it down with a stone…..

So would the gas main have been able to automatically shut a valve in response to the sudden pressure drop?