On Monday there were four trucks from the Gas company in front of my house!\u00a0 Now that I have your attention…<\/p>\n
There was nothing really that dangerous, but we did have a minor gas leak at the house.\u00a0 Shortly after moving in on Sept 6, Heather complained that she thought she could smell gas in one corner of the basement.\u00a0 I could smell gas a little, but not too strong, so decided to wait to see if the smell would go away.\u00a0 Last week on Wed, we had some friends over on the deck, and one commented that over on the far side he could smell gas.\u00a0 So I figured it was time to call the gas company (Xcel Energy).<\/p>\n
I called last week on Thurs, and a guy shows up in an hour.\u00a0 Right away he finds a leak in the gas meter, right outside the basement window.\u00a0 He fixed the leak in about an hour by replacing some parts on the meter.\u00a0 I asked if we had been in any danger, and he said not really.\u00a0 The only danger was that the leak could have abruptly gotten worse which might have been dangerous.\u00a0 He said they put so much of the odor into the gas, even the teensiest leak smells pretty strong.<\/p>\n
So what about the four trucks?\u00a0 Well, the next day on Fri, we could still smell gas, but I figured it might be some kind of lingering odor.\u00a0 But after still smelling gas in that corner all weekend (although not as strong), I called again on Monday.\u00a0 A different guy shows up, and using a meter he gets a gas reading right at the ground where the pipe feeds into the meter.\u00a0 He says he has to call in for a specialized crew to pinpoint things.\u00a0 Once again, nothing dangerous, other than the risk that it might get worse.<\/p>\n
About an hour later, the trucks show up one after another within about 5 minutes of each other.\u00a0 The first to show up is pulling a trailer with a small backhoe.\u00a0 Yikes!\u00a0 So now I've got 4 or 5 gas guys on my front porch talking about what to do.\u00a0 They say they need to start digging at the gas meter, and tell me the bush (that was planted way too close) needs to come out.\u00a0 Fortunately, it wasn't a particularly attractive bush, so I say go ahead.<\/p>\n
In the pictures below, you can see them driving the backhoe across the lawn on plywood sheets, so no damage to the lawn.\u00a0 They pulled the bush out (which still took 4 or 5 pulls from the backhoe), then dug things out by hand.\u00a0 Fortunately the leak was right there at the bend, so they didn't have to dig up any sidewalk or lawn.\u00a0 The leak was at a seam in the underground pipe.\u00a0 It was all original pipe from the late '70s, so it had just worn out.\u00a0 They had it all repaired and things filled back in a couple of hours.\u00a0 Other than the missing bush, you can't really tell that anything major happened.\u00a0 I was really pleased that they didn't trash anything.<\/p>\n
The good news about all of this was that the lease were all on the gas companies \"side\" of things, so there was no charge to us for them to fix things.<\/p>\n
I also got to meet another of our neighbors, Sandy, who coincidentally works as an engineer for Xcel Energy (the gas company), and even new a couple of the guys on the crew.<\/p>\n\n\t\t