The abolishment of gas
Wednesday, February 7th, 2024 at 10:25pm
Today my gas service was abolished.
This sounds fancy but what it means in practice is that I no longer have natural gas service to my house. The meter has been removed and it has been turned off at the main. It was only four months ago that I kicked of these changes by thinking about how expensive my gas bill was getting.
Although I stopped using gas two months ago I had been procrastinating about making the call, it was Daniel Bowen’s post about his experience that prompted me to get around to it.
On 22 January 2024 I called up my retailer to start the process. They emailed me a form to fill in and return which I did the same day. Then silence.
I use the same retailer for gas and electricity and as it happens on the Wednesday there was a form to fill in regarding the feed-in for solar. More silence.
To ease my mind on the Friday I called up and was able to confirm that both forms had been received and had triggered the next stage of each process. So time to wait.
A bit after 11AM today I noticed a truck with the logo of the gas distributor pull up and two workers get out. I didn’t need to speak to them but I wanted to make sure they only disconnected my gas service and did not affect the other unit as they still use gas. They said they first locate the services and then based on that will either just remove my meter and cap the pipe, or remove my meter and turn it off at the main.
It took them around an hour for:
- locate both gas and water for both units
- locate the gas and water mains on the nature strip across the road
- dig down to the gas main
- shut of my connection at the main
- confirm that was shut off to my meter
- remove my meter
- cut the service pipe off at ground level
- fill in the hole in the nature strip
I now expect to get my final bill with a $242 abolishment charge ($220 ex-GST), but that is ok as I will no longer have a $1/day charge (so $365/year) for a service I am not using.
There is still some pipework and the entire central heating still in place, but there is no urgency in removing those. In fact I have been wondering if it would be possible to repurpose the ducting, just running the fan to circulate air around my house…
Update 22 February 2024:
Received my final gas bill with the abolishment charges being:
Abolishment Admin Fee $ 33.00 Gas Service Order $ 76.65 Added SO# 1202394 Service Line Abolishment $ 165.35
The two service orders add up to the expected $242, then on top was the $33 admin fee charged by my retailer.
