I’ve never seen anything as foolish as this! I was at this site to add a gas pipe for a new cooker. When I asked to see the meter so as to undertake a tightness test before I started work  what I found was this mess shown below. As with many 2 up 2 down terraces the addition of gas by the old gas board were sloppy and the cupboards where the meters were placed were often times drafty . The solution for somebody here was several cans of expanding foam to stop the draft in the cupboard. In the process they had completely disabled the meter control valve making it impossible to move into a closed position! With no way to shut off the gas in the premises it would have been bad news had there ever been a leak or a fire!

After about fifteen minutes of cutting and scrapping I finally released the meter control valve and other fittings so they could all be checked. We sorted out the work we had to do, did our final tests and left knowing that the valve was available if required.

And although I know that none of the utility providers will find any of this interesting it is odd that years worth of meter readers never reported this as an unsafe situation to the management of their companies.

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