We’ve got gas!

Sorry for the bad title; I couldn’t help myself.

When our new neighbors moved in, they went to the city office to get all the utilities transferred to their name. Somehow gas fell through the cracks. I don’t know enough to know what happened, but when the previous tenants’ last day of the gas being in their name was up, the gas company just turned off the gas to our house. Now, we’re in the basement, so we pay some of the cost of the utilities in our rent, but we do not have an account with any utility companies besides phone and internet. So when the gas was off, it was off for both the upstairs and downstairs.

Of course, the gas company didn’t inform us they were turning off the gas. They turned it off sometime on Friday. Jon Boy noticed a slightly colder shower Saturday morning, but just assumed the upstairs neighbors had used a lot of hot water before he got in and thought nothing of it. Saturday night, I went to take a shower and noticed that there wasn’t any hot water. We checked the water heaters and found both pilot lights out, as well as the pilot light on the furnace. By now it was about 11:00 at night, so we decided to just deal with it in the morning.

Sunday morning, I called the gas company. They told me what had happened and told me that the new tenants would have to come in on Monday morning to get it turned back on. I told them that, and they assured me that they would do it first thing.

Monday morning, the new neighbors went in as they promised. The gas company told them they’d have the gas back on within two days. The neighbors told them that was unacceptable. Finally, the gas company said they’d get it on by 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Keep in mind that we’ve had no hot water since Saturday morning. No hot water means no showers and no doing dishes. Thank heavens this didn’t happen in January or we would probably have had to live somewhere else for a few days until the heat got turned back on. As it was, we had to boil water to wash our hair, and we went to Jon Boy’s sister’s Monday night to shower and bathe the boys. (Thanks, Steph!)

The gas company did unlock the gas meter yesterday at around 12:30 p.m. The upstairs tenant’s grandpa came and turned it on and relit all our pilot lights. Last night I finally did dishes. I’ve never been so excited to do dishes in my life. I ran the dishwasher, emptied it, filled it, and ran it again. I still need to wash pots this morning because I didn’t have time for everything.

Upstairs tenant’s grandpa said that the gas company should have informed us they were turning off the gas. Also, apparently, they legally can’t turn off the gas if we refuse to let them, especially because we are not the homeowners and we have young children. Good to know for next time. He also said that in all his years working as a plumber, he’s realized that the gas company is evil. He’s sued them before and told me he’s not afraid to do it again if we have any more trouble.

Hopefully I’ll never have to hold him to that.