Posted on 09/03/2017 7:38:37 PM PDT by Swordmaker
My parent built a second house on their property in Sacramento in 1954 for my grandmother to live in. Pacific Gas & Electric ran a gas line and installed a meter for that second house. They tapped the gas from the main gas line that was at the front house which had my parent's gas meter attached to it. That extra gas line to the second house ran about 80 to 100 feet farther to my grandmother's house.
Sometime in the 1970s the PG&E meter reader got tired of walking that extra 160 to 200 feet to read my Grandmother's meter every month and PG&E elected to MOVE the meter on her house to right next to the meter on my parent's house. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District's electric Meter reader didn't complain. . . the electric meter was about 10 feet farther back from the gas meter on my grand mother's house, and he actually had to go around my parent's house into the back yard by another route to get to the meter on their house to read theirs. Go figure.
In any case, PG&E moved that gas meter so it sat right next to the other gas meter so their meter reader wouldn't have to walk so far, hooked it to their pipe they had originally installed and then ran a connector pipe to jump between the inflow to the outflow gapping where the meter had originally been installed on my grandmother's house. . . all without telling my parents or my grandmother. It was a couple of weeks before anyone noticed. My father noticed when he was mowing and discovered he no longer had to mow around the meter by my grandmother's house and went looking for the meter!
Jump forward 40 years or so. Today the two houses are rental properties I own. One of my tenants calls and says there is a strong odor of gas by the gas meters. I call PG&E to come and check it out. PG&E's technician John shows up on a Sunday and announces that there is a gas leak on the "unauthorized owner installed gas pipe going toward back house" and RED TAGS the meter and shuts off the gas!
I call PG&E asking "WHAT THE HELL?" To which they answer "They have no records of any gas lines authorized to be installed from that address to another address!" and besides, they only will repair gas lines THEY installed up to their meter, and that all leaks "after the meter are the customer's responsibility."
I point out that THEY DID INDEED INSTALL THAT METER and that gas line, and that they, for their own convenience, MOVED IT from it's original location.
"We have no record of that on that property. You are responsible for any repairs to pipes on the customer side of the meter, sir."
"Do you really think I would voluntarily elect to MOVE a meter so that I would be responsible for repairs for 100 feet or so of underground GAS LINE?" I ask.
"Well, you or your parents did, or they must have installed it."
"No, I just told you that PG&E moved it for their convenience, not ours."
"Do you have any paperwork to show that from when it was done?"
"Of course not. PG&E did it on their own. They didn't even tell us they were going to do it."
"Well, you are responsible for fixing it, not us. It's on the customer side of the meter."
"PG&E installed this gas pipe and PG&E moved the meter for THEIR convenience not ours. Why would I accept responsibility for thousands of dollars of potential expenses for PG&E's convenience?"
"Well, you must have."
"Let me talk to a supervisor."
"I am a supervisor. You can't talk to anyone over me who will tell you anything different. You have to fix it. You can make a claim against PG&E if you like. Oh, and you'll have to get the city to inspect it before we can turn it on, because that pipe was never authorized to be there."
"It WAS put there by PG&E and inspected when the house was built in 1954. Not according to our records. That meter is for an apartment in the front house."
"There is NO apartment in the front house!" It's a three bedroom, two bath 960 square foot house, no apartment. It has a separate ADDRESS from the house in the back. We've been receiving TWO PG&E bills from these two houses for 35 years. I did until they were rented to TWO DIFFERENT TENANTS. They've been paying two different bills!
"Oh. Uh, what are the addresses?"
I give him the addresses.
"Well, it's been red tagged. You've got to fix it, get it inspected. Only then can we turn the gas back on. I'll give you the phone number of our office you need to talk to about getting an OK to be reimbursed, but I doubt they'll do it. They're not open until Tuesday."
"So my tenants are going to be without gas until someone can pull a permit. Why do we need a permit to do a repair?"
"Because it's not an authorized gas line."
"The house was fully permitted and inspected with an AUTHORIZED GAS LINE installed by PG&E in 1954 and YOUR COMPANY MOVED THE METER! Repairs should not require a GOD DAMN PERMIT!"
"Replacing an unauthorized gas line does!"
"It was NOT an unauthorized gas line. How many times do I have to tell you, PG&E installed that gas line and PG&E moved the blanking meter????"
"We have no records of that."
"How far do your records go back?"
"I have no idea."
AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
A lawyer is likely to be more than that for a case like this.
I can appreciate the helpful FReepers suggesting a lawyer, but you are right. A lawyer is going to be more expensive, take more time, and be more aggravating than just getting it done and moving on.
I am sure the utility people know it as well.
If the utility is a government entity, you may have a fairly short period of time in which to file a tort claim notice, or be barred.
They may have forms on your county judicial web site.
You can rep yourself at a utility commission appeal hearing can’t you?
If as you say you’re facing thousands in repair costs, and I suppose in the Golden state a raft of regulations, it is definitely worth the cost of at least one meeting with an attorney competent in this area.
Explain you aren’t prepared to sign a fee agreement, you just want a short appointment while explaining the nub of the matter to his secretary/paralegal so s/he can do some initial research, for which you may be charged.
About every third Californo is a lawyer, right? So finding one shouldn’t be a problem.
Common sense right there.They will never go for it.
>>”Let me talk to a supervisor.”
>>
>>”I am a supervisor. You can’t talk to anyone over me who will tell you anything different.”
I’ve gotten this kind of runaround at the post office (lost package, returned package (their applied postage fell of of my shipment and I was being billed to ship it again, etc.) and on different matters on the phone.
“What’s your name? I don’t have to give you that.”
“Is there someone else I can talk to?” “No” (refuse to acknowledge any oversight) or “Good luck with that!”
Couple, three years or so ago, PG&E came around and installed "Smart Meter" cellular reading attachments to all their meters, both of these included. Both of them have anti-tamper seals on them, the last time I looked at them. PG&E knows these are legitimate maters. They found BOTH accounts. . . I am just talking with dodos. It's the gas LINE they are claiming is somehow "unauthorized" that they hooked their meter to. How they get that idea I have an inkling of a clue.
The leak was called in to the front address due to both meters being attached to the front house. It's address number is 656. The back house is 654. . . the technician comes out to 656 finds a leak and traces a pipe that now has a leak but it goes from the meter for 654 and then to 654. 656 has no record of an authorized pipe for another building going toward the back! Voilá! Unauthorized gas piping! RED TAG! Technician thinks the second meter is for an apartment in 656 and extra pipe is unathorized, unpermitted later additional work to send gas to back buildings because it's not on the record for 656!
However, when the back house was built, the address it was built under and permitted was 654, all gas plumbing was authorized under 654, all records are under 654.
The city has told me it is odd, since the lot was never subdivided, that the address on the second house was not 656½ which is the normal way of handling it. But my parent's lot was an oversize lot (65' wide but 265' deep — we kids called it "the 'way back," which meant "way back beyond the incinerator," because the incinerator was right next to a fence that split the backyard in to two backyards— but a smidgeon too small to permit subdividing, so the city clerk issued a full address back in 1953 when my dad pulled a permit to build. By-the-way, the neighbors to the north of us had an even longer yard, maybe another 20' longer, but everyone else on our block had much shorter yards which were equal to the ones of the houses on the next block. The neighbors behind just the two middle lots on our block facing the other street had tiny backyards because the guy who owned the farm land in the 1930s lived on that piece and then finally subdivided it to make those two big lots for friends who wanted big gardens after developing the rest into equal sized lots.)
Having an unsubivided lot with two houses has caused a bunch of problems for me because other utility companies don't know how to do multiple dwelling billing. For example, the water company will not split the water and garbage bill for my two tenants, even though there are two water meters and two garbage services. They insist It's only one lot, so only one bill because their software uses the city's plot number as an account number. AAARRRGGGHHH!
Senseless. Ain't it?
What do they do for a high-rise condominium on one plot? I asked them. They bill the association, who has to bill each owner for their water use, and they are forced to have a joint garbage system.
they don’t usually put individual meters in condo or apartments. Too expensive. So we pay the bill through the association dues. i pay my gas and electricity to SDG%E but my water is a community bill.
I have a lawyer on my payroll. . . I just don't want to expend the money for this fur ball of a problem. I will if I have to. It's just irritating to run into little tin socialist monopolist dictators like this.
Alas, it is not. This is a huge private company. Regulated out the kazoo and down the wazoo by the PUC in California. . . but they moved this damn meter for their purposes and leave me holding the bag for their installed piping without a "so-by-your-leave," so they can get out from under any obligation for its maintenance. . . and so their meter reader doesn't have to walk so far and THEY don't have to pay him an hourly wage for a few extra minutes to do that walk.
At this point, I have no idea what the cost might be. I don't know how deep they buried the pipe or even where, exactly this leak is. I have an appointment in the morning with a plumbing company.
I do recall, some time ago, PG&E mapped where we could NOT put in fence posts due to the location of the gas pipe they now say is not theirs and/or unauthorized. But frankly, I don't recall when. Probably when we first put in the drive way to the back house after my grandmother died and it first became a rental (Gramma didn't drive). . . 1977? No, it was before that because my grandmother was in a nursing home for several years when she died. . . so, 1970 to 1971. . . so the meter had to have been moved after that. We had to dig the post holes to avoid the flags they put in showing where the line ran. Unfortunately, that fence is long gone, replaced with a repositioned, shorter and smaller fence line.
“I have a lawyer on my payroll. . . I just don’t want to expend the money for this fur ball of a problem. I will if I have to. It’s just irritating to run into little tin socialist monopolist dictators like this.”
But that may be the only way. Don’t be “penny-wise and pound foolish”, as they say.
And there is an important thing to consider: your tenants. You cannot leave them without gas — no hot water, can’t cook, etc. They may sue you.
So, everything considered, I think it is most important to do what you need to do to get the gas leak fixed and work with the gas co., then, when the gas is flowing again, get a lawyer and get PG&E to reimburse you and admit their error.
I ren crews that repaired and replaced and moved gas services her on LI and I can tell you there are records of that house and meter unless they lost them along with a great many others thru some fault of their own. Its unlikely that the hardware hasn’t been serviced in the past 40 years much less back to 1954. The the taps and valves don’t last no 63 years Any re-greasing or much more likely replacing of the valve would have recorded the location of the line, its length and the position of the meter in graphic form. See if there is a hand stamped number tag somewhere on the meter (usually transfixed by the gas pipe itself). THAT is the ID of the job along with the address. The job probably done when some OTHER gas work was being done close by and the move incorporated into that. The record would be of the other job.
I got that kind of horsepucky from AT&T when we were trying to switch my 95 year old mother's internet from DSL to U-verse because her DSL was down more often than it was up. In the process, AT&T succeeded turning off my mother's land line phone for over TWO WEEKS which she has had with them (or their predecessor company) for 75 years.
This landline has her alarm system, her lifeline, and her only means of communication (she lived on the phone).
I kept track of the time I spent trying to get her phone turned back on while AT&T technicians failed to keep eight different appointments, just not showing up at all—once when I called to find out where the tech was I was told "Well, there's no one here who wants to work today!"
Other times they were giving me the run around, and giving me a load of excuses why they could not turn her phone back on, even being told "Why don't you just get her a cellular phone?", and "We are the phone company, we can shut off phone service if we want to!", and they also announced that she had to re-apply for phone service with AT&T, including filling out and passing a credit check (she's never been late on a phone bill, or any bill for that matter, and my mother's credit score was only slightly lower than God's!). Once, when I asked to be connected to a supervisor, I was told "I'm the highest person at AT&T you're allowed to talk to!" Incidentally, this was from the day after Christmas to a week after the New Year. . . and my mother had no way to contact any of her friends or relatives.
As I said, I clocked all the time it took to finally get my mother's phone turned back on. It took a documented 29 ½ hours of phone time, counting waiting on hold, being hung up on, disconnected, being bounced from one department to the next, one supervisor to the next, talking to the "senior ombudsman" who was FIRED between 1:30 PM the day I talked to her and the next morning when I called her back to get the results of her trying to get the phone turned back on for a 95 year old senior, and finally getting a TECHNICIAN out to my mother's house who found that someone had disconnected a wire in the switch box down at the end of her block. . . and that was the entire problem all along!
I was livid. Within a month, the AT&T Business in a Box Digital with Internal service at my office (over $1100 monthly in billing landlines) was replaced by Comcast Business Phones and Internet. Over the next year we cancelled the AT&T cellular phones and switched to other carriers. We cancelled out advertising contracts with them when they came up for renewal. (over $500,000 in ten years). . . and we re-allocated that advertising elsewhere.
This was eight years ago, but we spread the word of AT&T's really poor customer service.
By-the-way, I took a clue from my daughter who at 18 years old had fought AT&T over a bollixed up bill, won, and billed them for the time she spent arguing with them and got them to pay her $800. I sent AT&T a bill for my time. . . came to $1475 at $50 an hour. While they did not pay cash, they credited me on the office bill.
That still did not stop me from cancelling service. They also sent a letter of apology to my mother. . . and credited her with six months of U-Verse. She was really happy to get back on the Internet. She got to use free it until she died at 95½. She thought the whole thing was a hoot. It didn't do MY blood pressure much good, though.
“strong smell” of gas by the meter set could be something as small as a leak on the nipple union, or the regulator venting.
The guy from PG&E is correct in saying that they stop at the meter, BUT he shouldn’t be a jerk about it.
IMO he should have referred it on up and let someone look all the way back into the records. There IS going to be a report somewhere made by the construction crew who ran the second service for the house in back. And there should be a report by the crew who later moved the meter set back out front. Even in 1954 with paper records there would have to be some documentation so if there ever needs to be a repair, the repair crew can look up the info and know that it’s a split service, etc.
As far as the paper records go, they will only scan x number of years into the computer system. Anything back beyond say 30 years is more than likely on microfiche.
As far as a repair, they might be able to run an insert using PEX through the old steel service line.
I think you have nailed the core issue. While you can sue you would probably lose and be out legal costs as well. Probably best to suck it up and pay to get it fixed.
Maybe there is another approach you could take. w
Why don’t you call them up and say that you are thinking of digging in the yard where the pipe must be located. They will come out and respond to you as a dutiful property owner who called them before digging and running into their pipe. Perhaps the repair department has a record of where that pipe is. Under those conditions you would be talking to the repair department that probably doesn’t care.... versus the billing department who’s trying to shrug off the repair responsibilities that they Shrugged off 30 years ago.
it’s worth a try it will be free
Dumb question: If this cost is that low, can you get the work done, then sue in Small Claims? Add in your lost revenue, if any?
Any family photos of the yard showing the meter where was?
Not back where it was. It was a 5 foot wide access to the new "way back," the backyard of the second house. There was a neighbor's low hanging fig tree that shaded it nicely and made it a great pretend cave or the inside of a rocket ship or submarine for us kids, but not much light for photos back there. The gas meter made a great part of the rocket engine or sub diving controls.
I had some great stuff I'd bought from the Rocklin Army-Navy Surplus yard, old control panels from planes, ships, etc. you could buy that stuff by the pound and it was great for a kid to make his own spaceship control room. Big knobs, switches, lights (I got some to even blink), great stuff. All the kids would come and we'd remake it in different ways, either in my grandmother's garage in the winter, or by that gas meter in summer, if it wasn't too hot, but that shade was always good and a breeze usually blew through there. Man, the things we could imagine you could see through those fig leaves. . . Kids today don't know what they're missing with their preprogrammed games.
THANKS! I think I'm going to do that, but if it's just a repair, . . Fingers crossed.
SM, you or the plumber will have to call 811 for the gas line(and other utilities) to be marked out if there is any digging to be done. The markout is done for free. Here in DE they have three business days to complete the markouts.
Once everything is marked out, take pictures of where all the lines are for future reference.
I hope a plumber can repair the leak—that it is at a joint that is accessible—without digging.
That would be the ideal resolution.
It will be a battle for PG&E to accept any responsibility for the gas line itself. A photograph showing the original meter location at the back house would be your strongest evidence.
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