Gas leak

uustressed

recently had gas meter changed resulting in gas leak which company have now admitted liability for. I Consider this very serious and life threatening. Been contacted by the company today and asked what level of compensation i am looking at. is this the right procedure and how do you put a price on this. the stress this has caused just trying to communicate with them has been unbelievable. Any body got any ideas?

Airwolf1

You don't really give us much to go on, what problems have you had. Gas on its own is odourless, but has the smell added into it just for this purpose. If gas was smelt straight away, I guess the company came out as soon as you reported it?

uustressed

The gas leak was from a meter exchange. The engineer told me there would be a residual smell of gas. There was but i trusted his workmanship. Went out for at least 4 hours came back and smelt the gas before i put the key in the front door. Phoned the metering company they phoned transco who came removed a part the engineer had fitted and left then left. This is a lot more indepth than it sounds but giving you a brief outline. Gas company initially denied the problem was with them but the evidence as there. the new meter and pipes were very new, the old meter and pipes were very old.

Pink_fluff

uustressed wrote: »

recently had gas meter changed resulting in gas leak which company have now admitted liability for. I Consider this very serious and life threatening. Been contacted by the company today and asked what level of compensation i am looking at. is this the right procedure and how do you put a price on this. the stress this has caused just trying to communicate with them has been unbelievable. Any body got any ideas?

Why should you be due any compensation? The relevant people attended, the leak was obviously fixed. I don't understand why you are due comp

uustressed

i don't consider it ok to put somebodies life at risk for shoddy workmanship. they aren't making sandwiches down the road. As i have said, this is just a brief outline of the events. i'm not going into further detail here. Don't judge unless you know all of the facts. If a wheel fell off your car after a service and you were ok, would you leave it at that. Thousands of people wouldn't.

Pink_fluff

Sandwiches? Well if you are not willing to go into further detail, then you're only going to get vague comments from other people.

Pssst

It is quite clear what the op is alleging. She/he is saying that someone came and changed her meter. Following the meter exchange,there was a gas leak which the op is attributing to the possible failure of the meter worker to do the job and ensure that there was no leak. Now then,it would be useful if the op could clarify exactly what was leaking after the work was done and also,who did the meterwork i.e whos name was on the side of the van that came?

No actual harm has been done in this instance save for perhaps some stress and inconvenience. The threshold of smell for natural gas is a few hundred parts per million for most people. This means that even a very small leak can smell terribly. The chemical additive which creates the smell is such that only a small concentration creates a big smell and enough alarm to make you do something about it!

In reality,the flammability limits of natural gas are within the range 5-15% gas in air. It is extremely rare for this concentration to exist in a domestic premise under leakage conditions. In fact,in a typical house,with normal ventilation,you'd be hard pressed to generate that concentration even if you left the cooker on unlit all day and night !

So then,who exactly did the work and what do you wish to be compensated for?

littletommytucker

Your not legally due any compensation, if you were awarded any, it would be discretionary. There would be no obligation to award you any compensation though. As Pssst said, it is important to know who carried out the work. Who do you feel is to blame in this situation?

A) The company that send you your bill?
The company that carried out the work?
C) The company that own your meter?

....as they are all probably different companys, who did you feel should pay up???

Ephemera

Nothing actually happened, thankfully, apart from an inconvenience to the OP.

Could have been worse, though, there are people (my Sis included in this) that have a limited or no sense of smell, who could have been at a massive risk. Or someone just going on holiday....whose heating was left on to stop frost...or had lighting timers!

Although compensation is a bit of a moot point here, it might be worth the OP asking the installation company what measures they are putting in place to ensure this doesn't happen again...?

Just a thought lol

adprob

Any compensation would be aimed at the meter/network owner and not your supplier. Your gas supplier (company you paid your bill to) has no liability over the meters / pipework

Pssst

Did you all know by the way that you are actually allowed to have a leak?