Categories
Home life

My gas is getting better

Small bulldozerOn my nature strip this morning is a little bulldozer. Unfortunately it’s not a late Christmas present. Some guys from the gas company have been digging up various bits of the street all week, including parts of my driveway around the gas meter.

This has meant the gas has been disconnected between 8am and 5pm each day, thus requiring me to have to have my morning shower by 8am — something of a challenge at times. I certainly hope this won’t be the case over the weekend.

And the reason? High-pressure gas upgrade. Woo hoo! What does it mean for me, the humble consumer? I have no idea. Hotter hot water? It’s hot enough. Higher cooker gas flames? They’re high enough.

By the way, I can’t work out how my nature strip remains so lush and green of its own accord, while my lawn is dying from lack of water.

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

8 replies on “My gas is getting better”

Chances are too that once the gas company has packed up and gone then the power or water people will come along and dig up the exact same spot and do their thing. It never ceases to amaze me how frequently this happens.

Maybe you’ve got a leaky water pipe under the nature strip and it’s feeding the grass.

The high pressure gas main will mean that pipes in your house that were previously too small for some appliances to run properly (like big central heating units or instantaneous hot water systems) will now be big enough to feed such appliances. Natural gas comes usually at 1 MPa of pressure, but with the high pressure upgrade you’ll be able to get a gas meter that delivers it at 2.75 MPa.

So, in my house, instead of needing a 32mm pipe for the central heating boiler, we only need a 19mm pipe. Which is lucky because when we told the builder to put in a big pipe when he built the house two years ago (only LP gas was available at that time and it is at high pressure), he didn’t do it.

I was walking along a street in Bentleigh today, to the East of the railway line between Patterson & Bentleigh stations, and noticed what looked to be the exact same mini-excavator on someones naturestrip. Moving around the area perhaps?

Comments are closed.