As I've mentioned before, I've had sinus problems for decades, and my senses of taste and smell are both severely numbed because of it. Over the last few days, I thought I was getting whiffs of a gas smell in the region of my meter, so this morning I called the gas company to come out and look at it. Apparently they have a "thing" about gas leaks, enough to have a 24-hour emergency response team, which I hadn't even thought about or I would have called yesterday. Wadda-goober, huh?
So, the guy shows up with the gas detector wand and it goes crazy. He said there's an o-ring where the round regulator connects to the pipe, and they dry out over time. He said he would just replace it with a new one, rather than screw around with it, which he did. By new, I mean out-of-the-box new, all zeroes. It's also smaller than the old one. For 15 years, I've always wondered why my meter was so big. Turns out, I actually had the "small business" meter, capable of delivering roughly 20 times more gas than everything in my house could ever draw at one time. The regular residential size that I have now is only capable of three times more than I really need.
It also turns out, the bigger meter carries a bigger monthly base charge, too. I had no idea! It's only $3 a month, but I've been paying that for 15 years, totally clueless. It's a trivial amount, compared to the rest of my monthly gas bill, but I never owned a house before. How would I ever know that? No one ever told me.
I should have asked him if he could just pump it directly into the house, and not have a meter at all. Everybody wins, right?
05-18-2009, 07:37 PM
What's that smell?
