I have a gas problem…

Last week it was time to fire up and test the second floor water heater. The only thing holding us back was the locked gas meter for the second floor unit – or so we thought... After giving Peoples Gas a call on their emergency phone line, they quickly arrived to the scene within 4 hours. The lock was popped off, a couple swift kicks to loosen the valve, and gas had been turned back on to the unit upstairs. The gas man marked the meter using a sharpie and stalked the dial like a hawk for movement. Ten minutes later and sure enough it had slightly moved. What did this mean? A gas leak….

When I first opened up and exposed the kitchen walls around two months ago I thought it was fascinating that my building still had the original 100 year old gas lamp lines. The lines were installed at the turn of the century before electricity had been wired to the house. The first pipes I noticed were the risers in the kitchen, upon opening the roof we found the piping ran to all the ceiling fixtures in the entire house and had been covered with new light electric fixtures.

After the gas man noted the leak he pulled out a fancy meter and started checking all the recent work the plumbers had done. No beeps. Our attention, as you may have guessed from my segway, quickly shifted to the 100 year old gas lines. Could it really still have gas running through the lines after 100 years of not being used? BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. Yeap.

What is scary about this is the fact that the leak was coming from an old ceiling fixture line that should have been sealed and capped off. Every time the light was turned off and on it was like playing a game of Russian roulette on whether my attic would be going up in flames.

While a huge fire may have solved my water damage problem, the gas man didn’t allow that option and quickly shut off (locked) the meter. The plumbers came out on Friday and traced the old lines to the basement, cut the pipes, and capped them off. After 100 years the house no longer has gas running through my ceilings and walls and is finally an all “electric” property. Thomas Edison would be proud.