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Gas-main break means cold night for many on Moss Hill in Jamaica Plain
By adamg on Mon, 01/24/2022 - 10:07pm
A chilly Moss Hill resident who has been without heat since at least 4 p.m. reports on the huge hole National Grid now has on Moss Hill Road near Woodland Road:
Gas Main leak affecting over 200 households in the Moss Hill area. Gas has been shut off for hours leaving most households without heat or hot water.
Once fixed, a National Grid person will have to enter every household to ignite their pilots. Cold night for everyone.
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Comments
Luck it's tonight
30 won't bust pipes.
15 tomorrow night or 10 on Wednesday night might.
How did this happen?? It
How did this happen?? It could have been worse. Gas is a helpful resource but it can be no joke and gas lines need to be safe and not broken. How did this happen????!!!!!
What about houses that have
What about houses that have no pilots? I'd be surprised if a heating system or stove bought in the last 30 years had one, since it's a waste of gas, and an electronic ignition works fine.
Tank water heaters usually have a pilot the heat is useful and they don't require any electricity to operate. But tankless heaters don't.
Two people
Or some other method for proof.
We just had our meter replaced, the gas company people stayed in the basement where they changed the meter. My SO was with them, they called me upstairs to check the gas stove. Once I affirmed it was working, they went on their way. Did not need to enter the unit.
That's not true
I bought a new gas stove about 15 years ago w/ a pilot light. Electronic ignition was not an option because there was no electrical outlet behind the stove. I don't know if luxury models or newer models solve for that problem, but it was not an option for me at that time.
That said, why would National Grid need to relight everyone's pilot lights? Can't a homeowner do that themselves or is it something homeowners don't know how to do?
Just had a new meter put in
They had to relight my pilots and no I have no clue how to do it.
I believe
They're 'required' to do it. For safety.
A few guesses
They probably go around and shut off the gas at the houses, and only then repressurize the system—otherwise they'd have gas coming out through the pilot light into the house, creating an explosion hazard. So, in this scenario I'm imagining, they would then need to come by again and light the pilot light in coordination with turning on the gas at the side of the house again.
Another possibility is that there could be air in the gas line after a loss of pressure, and maybe they want to ensure that any air bubbles are flushed out first. (Because again, gas flowing without being burned leads to an explosion hazard.)
I don't know anything authoritative, though.
Pilot lights have a safety switch
Pilot lights have a thermal safety switch that shuts off the gas to the pilot light if it goes out.
I've relighted pilot lights myself on stoves, ovens, and furnaces, although admittedly never in a situation where the gas main was shut off.
They need to confirm there
They need to confirm there isn’t a unlit pilot filling up the house with gas fumes.
Pilot lights
have a thermocouple that cuts off the gas to the pilot light if the gas goes out. If pilot lights did not have this safety feature, then buildings would be blowing up all over the place because pilot lights can go out from time to time.
Maybe now they do but in the
Maybe now they do but in the old kitchen I grew up in, they didn’t have such fancy safety thingamajigs.
23 year old boiler
Has a pilot BUT needs electrons to run the fan/flue.
It also trips a valve that seals off the gas when the pilot is off - we have to manually trigger the pilot to release gas to re-light the pilot.
We have a set up where we can hook up an inverter and run the damper system off of our snowblower batteries in a power outage, but would have to relight the pilot from a gas outage.