Do You Remember The Country's Conversion To Natural Gas . . . .

[Canary42]

. . . . and do you have any amusing anecdotes arising therefrom (this thread inspired by sandyRoe's gaslight one)

[Tilly2]

I'll ask Sid.

[weecalf]

I though natural gas was a relief but this means summit else don’t it

[andy-hughes]

I do remember, and I remember my parents' grocery shop doing really well out of the contractors in the area who obviously had camping stoves and bought masses of food to cook for their meals.

[Buenchico]

Sorry, I can't do 'amusing' with my anecdote but it's true anyway:

After the gas fitters came to my parents' house in Ipswich to carry out the changeover, there was a residual smell of gas left in the big, walk-in cupboard under the stairs. My parents just said "Don't worry about it; it will go away".

Over the years everyone in our house got used to the fact that there was always a very slight smell of gas in that cupboard but nobody ever really bothered about it.

A few years later though, I'd been away at college for several months and as soon as I walked back into my parents' house I noticed that the whole house smelt of gas. I immediately pointed it out to my parents but (presumably because they'd been living with it for months) they just couldn't smell it at all.

The following day they both went out to work but I insisted on calling the gas board (which my mother thought was totally pointless, as she still couldn't smell any gas).

When the fitter turned up he immediately said "For God's sake, get some windows open. This place could blow up at any minute!". When I told him that he was only smelling what was left of the gas after I'd already had every door and window in the place open for over an hour, he went white!

After quite a bit of fiddling about, the fitter found and fixed a leak, announcing that he'd just need to carry out a pressure test to check that everything was now OK. However the pressure test showed that there was another leak somewhere, so he fixed that and carried out another pressure test. Yet again, the test failed, leaving him to find and fix a third leak. Even then, the problem wasn't solved until he'd finally detected and fixed the FOURTH leak!

My parents had been living in that house for years (with my father regularly lighting up his ciggies not far from the cupboard where the gas leaks all were) without ever being aware of the risk!

Whenever I see news reports about houses suddenly being blasted to bits by gas leaks, I wonder if they also had one or more very slow gas leaks over a number of years, with nobody in the house noticing the very gradual build-up of gas.

[Canary42]

Bloody Hell Chris, what a lucky escape (pun unintended)