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!!!!!!!!
Exactly, get the damn gas off of the property and go all electric!
I have had an all electric home since 1984...
Get a good lawyer and sue the hell out of them. Going to the local media couldn’t hurt either.
All these people advising you to sue clearly have never been a plaintiff. Lawyers are pros at emptying your wallet, so think long and hard about this matter before lawyering up.
Sounds as if there may be regulatory irregularities that would be a problem for the utility, since they’ve been billing for this separate meter for decades. I’d suggest going the public route with the tv station to embarrass them, in addition to siccing the regulatory bureaucracy upon them. They’re a monopoly, they’re required to provide service. Summarily cutting it off without notice on a flimsy pretext is, to my knowledge, not permitted.
However, you’ve got a tenant in the meantime. If you’re going to fight this, tenant requires functioning utilities in the rental unit. Making repairs to the line, installing a tank or going electric are the options. You can claim duress on the repairs to the line and seek restitution. If you sincerely believe yourself to have a legally actionable case, then treble damages might enter the picture.
The answer is obvious. You need to convert all of the property over to electric service. Then go and buy some solar panels and have them installed in Stockton. Then you can claim that your rentals are “self-powered”.
PG&E gas has been a customer of mine for 20 years. I have the name and number of the person you should contact to resolve this problem. It is a shame you called me an idiot - more than once. Apparently I am to stupid to find the number in my records.
I had a similar problem with our local gas company about 20 years ago. I could small gas and there was no shutoff valve between the meter and my house.
I called the gas company and they said it was an unauthorized installation and my responsibility.
I called the town engineering office and I don’t know what they said to the gas company, but there was a gas company truck out to fix the problem about 45 minutes late.
Depending on what the old service looks like we usually use it as a conduit and push the plastic through it, one..maybe two holes to dig at either end of the old service.
Is there an equivalent of a Board of Public Utilities in the state? A phone number should be on the bill somewhere. That would PG&E’s controlling authority, and the utility does NOT like when they are involved and try to get things resolved as quick as possible.
“
if they don’t have a record ask for rebate on bill payments.”
Forget rebate. Ask for full reimbursement.
After reading your post about billing, you may have an out to get the other building an address recognized by the city. For emergency dispatch purposes like ambulance calls separate address are required in many states. That has resulted in readdressing streets and renaming streets when another or others exist with the same street name in a county. Someone in the city or county administration is responsible for addressing. That should supersede the city’s recalcitrance.
Ditto what you said: They have ‘read’ the meter in that location for forty years and never once complained.
My electric company installed a new meter with a device to shut down my air conditioner compressor during peak electric usage. I never authorized that device to be connected to MY air conditioner. I raised hell with the electric company and filed a complaint with the state public utilities commission and finally got the device removed.
Damn!
Reading through this I can feel for your frustration.
Whatever the solution ends up being, I’d want that damn meter back in it’s original location when it’s all done.
BTW, the patched in piping where the meter was could be evidence that it is indeed their pipe in the ground,
As I recall, the old location is obvious as all get out. The re-routing piping is there where the gas line comes out of the ground, then a gap filling pipe that PG&E installed to connect that pipe to the house.
I have an appointment in a couple of hours this morning with a plumber and will take some photos of the original location. I'm wondering how the plumber will be able to locate the leak now that PG&E has shut off the gas (and put a seal on the valve) at the meter. Sniffer's can't work then.
I'm fit to be tied, again.
This morning, promptly at 8AM my phone rang. It was PG&E's auto dialer with a perky robot voice calling, waking me up on a holiday, to inquire how pleased I was with their technician's visit yesterday. I hung up. I was just going back to sleep when the phone rang again at 8:15AM. . . PG&E calling back, same perky ROBO VOICE calling back, apparently to make sure I was REALLY AWAKE! AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
Question #2: "Did our technician leave your equipment in a safe and working condition? Please press one for YES or press 2 for NO."
2222222222222222!!!!!!!
Unfortunately, there was no question: "Are you pleased that our system woke you twice after a short fitful night of sleep with inane questions about a service call in which we made erroneous assumptions about our prior work? Please press one for 'Are You Kidding me' or press two for 'Hell NO!' or press three for '@#$* YOU and the horse you rode in on, too!'". . . but there should have been!
Nice try, mad_as_he$$, but I don't believe a word of your claims. You always take the low road. You've demonstrated your predilections to lie in previous threads. Why should I believe you in this one?
In California it's the Public Utilities Commission. PUC. They won't be open until Tuesday. Great these things happen on holiday's, isn't it?
The city and the US Post Office recognizes it. Even PG&E has been sending separate bills. Only the water and garbage bill refuses to do so. . . because they bill by plot number, not address, even though they had no problem installing two different water meters, which have two separate meter numbers, and have two separate service addresses for garbage service. Idiocy on parade. They have no problem delivering a garbage bin to the correct address (there are two separate driveways). But who ever programmed their computer used the County's plot numbers to establish the account numbers, and they can't even add an A and a B or a -1 -2 to the account number, Brain Dead system.
Not only that, they installed the cellular 'smart meter" system on it several years ago so they could get rid of the meter readers entirely. They had to have seen the so-called "unauthorized" pipe then. . . and I'm pretty sure the meter has been replaced at least once in the past 40 years.
my intent thanx
Oh man—on Labor Day, no less!
When you want to sleep in.
I’m sure the plumber has encountered this type of situation before and will have ways to pressure test the underground portion and the above ground connections.
See if your Dad took pictures of the newly built house in 1954, maybe ones that have your grandparents standing around the house then or in following years. You may luck out and have a picture that shows the original meter in the background where it was installed. It’s worth a shot.
Best of luck to you today with the plumber.
Stuff like that can make a customer go postal, paying a little “visit” to the utility company’s office!
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