Went through a gas pipe today

[tlovatt]

When I used to work for STW someone I knew was the project manager for a job in Rugby, contractor on site doing initial investigation including sinking some boreholes to see what was below the surface, on this occasion it turned out to be a medium pressure gas distribution pipe! That shut down the west coast main line and the cement works for a bit. I forget how much the bill was, but I bet it was painful.

 

[ibrooks]

My uncle found an electric cable whilst digging in the front garden - it quite surprised him as we had already found the supply to the house and had it all neatly uncovered and ready for covering up with the block paving.

Turns out that the neighbours supply was run diagonally across the garden.

Took a big chunk out of his favourite spade!

 

[Nomad]

I dug a shallow trench (8" ?) at the edge of the property to put a row of solider bricks on end as we were planning to put gravel down, and holed the gas supply for the house that ran up the middle of the drive - it was just a few inches below the surface.
Gas board come out, chap said as I was working on my own property there would be no bill.
If I'd been working at a customers they would have billed me - despite it being just a few inches below the surtface rather than the recommended 600mm/900mm down.

Next year we levelled the other end of the garden and found where it looped past the back of the house, again too shallow to put a brick on end above it.

 

[brightspark]

I dug a shallow trench (8" ?) at the edge of the property to put a row of solider bricks on end as we were planning to put gravel down, and holed the gas supply for the house that ran up the middle of the drive - it was just a few inches below the surface.
Gas board come out, chap said as I was working on my own property there would be no bill.
If I'd been working at a customers they would have billed me - despite it being just a few inches below the surtface rather than the recommended 600mm/900mm down.

Next year we levelled the other end of the garden and found where it looped past the back of the house, again too shallow to put a brick on end above it.

if I was working at someone's house and that happened to me they most certainly wouldn't charge me. id have taken a picture and kicked off if it wasn't at correct depth . they could hardly come out and said there not fixing it unless they get paid

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

if I was working at someone's house and that happened to me they most certainly wouldn't charge me. id have taken a picture and kicked off if it wasn't at correct depth . they could hardly come out and said there not fixing it unless they get paid

Indeed. If they were all installed at correct depth half the strikes wouldn't happen.
There fault for bodging it first time round that they have to bodge it second time round. Surely they should be sunk to depth upon discovery...

 

[brightspark]

the 12 inch gas main goes along the main road near us and in the last 2 years the roads been dug up 5 times quite close to each other bad joints in the plastic was talking to a gas guy and he said he gets loads of callouts on dirty leaky joints where they haven't been cleaned properly

 

[garethp]

I put a fence post though a gas pipe about 4 years ago, the hammer blow that did it was just as the father in law said "i think the gas pipe is around here and it's only about 6inch below the surface.

Apparently all the houses near by were connected at the same time and most of the pipework is barely underground. The gas network guys didn't give a toss and we got billed £850 for two electro fusion connectors and 300mm of pipe

Fortunately in our case the in laws house insurance covered it

 

[Cuthy246]

Indeed. If they were all installed at correct depth half the strikes wouldn't happen.
There fault for bodging it first time round that they have to bodge it second time round. Surely they should be sunk to depth upon discovery...

Technically the gas board don't actually install pipes to properties, well not all the time. The contractor building the houses puts all the infrastructure in and the gas board just come and do the final connection and testing.

 

[brightspark]

Technically the gas board don't actually install pipes to properties, well not all the time. The contractor building the houses puts all the infrastructure in and the gas board just come and do the final connection and testing.

well if there are anything like the waterboard you dig and lay the pipes they then inspect and give the ok to fill in the trench if its to specification

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

well if there are anything like the waterboard you dig and lay the pipes they then inspect and give the ok to fill in the trench if its to specification

Beat me to it.

 

[Keith 66]

Three years ago I had to have my Dog put to sleep one evening. We brought him home to bury him in the garden.
It was september & very hot and so with a dead dog in the boot of my car i parked in the shade & we covered him with ice packs. Next morning i was up very early to dig his grave.
Now my son Nick had just a few days before grubbed a large shrub out in the front garden & had wet the ground with a hose for several hours to make it easier to dig. And so i thought why not make the hole a bit deeper & wider & put the dog in there.
So tarp on the lawn for the mud & im going down like a badger, digging is easy & very soon there is a big heap of earth & im nearly there.
Then i hit a root, Out comes the sharp axe & wallop PFSSSSSSSSS It goes. What was a very bad day already got far worse.
There i am down the hole squashing the pipe flat with a g clamp turning the air blue while my wife phones the gas board.
Half an hour later an engineer arrives & sucks through his teeth, "That could be expensive if we have to put a whole new pipe into the meter". I Replied "Best you just shoot me now!"
An hour later a crew turn up dig round the pipe & after some time manage to procure the right size part to fix the pipe.
Of course this leaves us back to square one with the Dog.
There is some debate as to if they will charge us & the engineers phones get hot.
We have no choice but to go out in the back garden & the only place we have left, Of course its in the hot sun & the hard clay is like sodding concrete. By now Nick joins me & we get to it. Pickaxe, spade & graft. We hose each other down as we dig stripped to the waist with the poor dog visibly swelling in the back of my car.
My wife fills the gas men with tea & lemonade & they stick there heads over the fence to see me & nick toiling in the boiling sun. We got him buried by 10:35am. We then rushed up to the top of the hill to watch the Grain chimney blow down.
In the end the gas board didnt charge us, probably thought the possible bad publicity wasnt worth it!
I can laugh about it now but at the time i had an acute sense of humour bypass.

 

[mike os]

if I was working at someone's house and that happened to me they most certainly wouldn't charge me. id have taken a picture and kicked off if it wasn't at correct depth . they could hardly come out and said there not fixing it unless they get paid

Regrettably you are still liable. . Last one I did I had photos of the problem and the repair. .. The invoice had the wrong items on it( larger t joints not straight that they used, wrong cable etc) my insurance company looked into it and basically it doesn't matter where it is, whst you can show or prove, if you damage it you are liable ..... They were as disgusted as I was but still had to pay up

 

[baconbarm]

Just an update for future reference for anyone in the same situation..
The company who dealt with it
was called 'cadent' and we got a bill the other day £276 .
Tbh I thought it reasonable, given it was an emergency and all that.
So I'm quite happy really, as long as I only pop a gas line once a decade or so

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Just an update for future reference for anyone in the same situation..
The company who dealt with it
was called 'cadent' and we got a bill the other day £276 .
Tbh I thought it reasonable, given it was an emergency and all that.
So I'm quite happy really, as long as I only pop a gas line once a decade or so

Cant complaint about that mate.
Bargain really for emergency call out

 

[baconbarm]

Cant complaint about that mate.
Bargain really for emergency call out

And it were just one bloke, a separate team came out in pitch black and got it do e

 

[Morrisman]

Used to work at a firm that had premises on a corner road of an industrial estate. They drew plans for a extension to the building. All drawings and utility plans for the estate showed the pipes went along the road, but no, when the digger went through a 12" main gas pipe they found that the pipe had cut the corner by about 50 ft!
.

The deeds to my house showing a sewer going down th centre of the property, between the house and the front single garage, appears to follow a concrete footpath all the way through.

I built myself a double garage off to one side, solid concrete, heavy building, big foundations, and then block paved that half of the yard. Towards the end of the project I discovered a heavy man hole cover off to the side, right next to the property line. Pulled the cover off and found what appears to be the sewer that is supposed to run down the centre of the garden..... one end of my garage goes right over it.

I built it over a decade ago, but it worries me what’ll happen is ever we sell the place and surveys are done.

The front garage, that has been there years, also goes over the sewer, and our neighbours large extension goes very close to it too.

 

[Browser]

Not gas but doing a job for a mate of my father in laws, drilling through a 20+ inch stone wall into the garage from the house to run radiator pipes. Inside the garage I could see the electric main coming out of the flag floor and up the wall to the meter that was fitted at high level. Just to be sure I slid a sheet of ply between the cable and the wall and was drilling through from above the skirting board inside through to the garage when the power went off! In the garage there was no sign of the drill bit then I found out the garage floor was around 6" higher than the house floor and in a 20' long garage wall I had managed to hit a 1.5" main cable below the flag floor
To cap it off I found the cable also supplied 2 more attached cottages and the house owner had gone out shopping. I rang Norweb and explained what had happened but they still had to send out a surveyor to check! I dug up the flags and cleared around the pipe and about 4 hours later the outside gang came 2 of them, 1 with a hangover and spent about 15 minutes making a joint and sealing it with resin.
This was around 1980 and it cost me £180

I was drilling from the garage to the under-stairs cupboard to run a lighting cable in a while back, and despite measuring, re-measuring and re-re-measuring still managed to drill straight through the stair stringer rather than into the void space I'd aimed at. As a mate said at the time, it makes you feel like a total cock because they can drill a tunnel under the channel and end up within millimetres of where they intended to be but you can't even drill between two rooms in your house without cocking it up
As far a s gas mains go, a late former colleague was working at R.A.F. Alconbury many years ago when someone managed to go through an LPG main with a backhoe. He said you could see the stuff shimmering away across the ground as it escaped, no point running as it was everywhere. Knocked out a good number of base facilities for a few hours while that got fixed!

 

[fixerupper]

Years ago I worked with a digger driver doing house sewer connections in villages in Suffolk ..we would get the gas ,water, electric and phone chaps out before we got digging and they would tell us were to expect pipes and cables and we
would mark the road ,pavements and garden based on the info they gave us ...The digger driver always had a pair of dowsing rods in the cab ...he was generally more accurate at pinpointing stuff in the ground than the scanner and the drawings were..