Gas Line Inspections

Nick's Plumbing & Air Conditioning Live Video Transcription:

On today’s show, gas line inspections in Houston, John Eccles, Richard Saad, that was the dry run. All right, we’re good on the intro, right? Oh, well, I don’t know why. Just totally dazed out.

There you go.

On today’s show, gas line inspections in Houston.

I’m John Eccles. Richard Saad, we’re here for another beautiful day. It is another beautiful week in Houston, Texas, and today’s show, the gas line inspections with the winter around. It should be a hot topic. What do you think? I think so. I. So let’s dive right in. Gas Line inspections. We get a ton of phone calls, a ton of emails about the title, Gas Line Inspection, which is funny because when you actually talk to you customers, what you’re actually asking about is normally gas leaks and you need it inspected to to solve that problem or there’s some sort of issue with your gas system where you’re needing an inspection in order to get service or retain service. So there’s a couple of different ways that this can go and I think that we’re going to go over all of them kind of quickly at a 10,000 foot view. So you get a real good idea of what we’re talking about and then we can tell you what to expect from the inspection and such forth.

Now on this topic, you guys, we could literally talk for an hour. So it’s exactly what John said. We’re going to give you the overview and from the, from an elevated level and give you enough information so you can make an educated decision today. But as usual we are always in the office to where you can call us and we can dwell down and, and specifically help you on that need. Absolutely. So take today, show, understand what we’re saying, but know this, that there is more to what we’re, we’re actually going to tell you absolutely. Okay. So type one’s pretty simple, right? If you’ve, uh, moving into or have had a vacant, vacant house, maybe it’s a rent house. I’m not sure what the situation, but it’s been vacant for over a year. The city is gonna require what? Gas Line Inspection? Gas Line inspection. Normally the gas will not be on your home that long.

Normally it’s been turned off a long time before and in order to move in and turn that back on, they’re gonna want a gas line inspection of the premises that’s pretty cut and dry. You have to do it. You’re going to have to get a city inspection cities and to come out after we do the inspection of the gas system, which we’ll go into later on what all that entails, but the city will come out, inspect it. Once that’s done, you can get your system turned back on. Pretty simple, right? That’s exactly right. Tight to his little different. You’re living in the home, you get an urgent gas leak, you smell gas. Something’s going on with your gas system. You know it’s not right. You’re, you’re kind of, you’re not sure what to do. Well, in both instances you’re going to end up with a plumbing company at your home.

Absolutely. So, uh, innocent one. A lot of people call center point, right? And Center point is gas provider. The gas provide a service provider. They’re in the business of selling a dangerous product. Try. We’re in the business of providing a service to fix that. I try it. So if you call them, what are they going to do? Typically they’re gonna pull your meter or they’re going to lock you out. All right? And then they’re going to tell you and it’s usually when it’s 30 degrees outside. Absolutely. So you have no heat and they’re going to tell you, hey, you need to call a plumbing company. Right? And so that’s where you end up with us. Um, so what ends up happening is when they do that, obviously they’re shutting off your gas. You can’t get it back on until you have us come out and address the leak.

Okay? The other option is, is if, if it’s safe and, and you know how to turn off your own gas or you can get a plumbing company out to your home promptly, you can call a plumbing company instead and they might be able to get to you without going to that center point. A hurdle a either way is completely fine in any emergency situation, I’d tell everybody, call center point. It is a dangerous product. As Richard said, you do not want that in your house. Uh, you know, obviously a lot of things can happen. We don’t have to go into that. Um, so you wanted to address either way in the quicker, the better. In this instance, again, either way when this happens, center or us, we’re gonna have to come out and fix the leak. Again, you’re going to have, if you call center point, it’s going to have to be inspected, right?

Absolutely. That’s got to be inspected for them. The to turn it back on. If you call a plumbing company first and we happened to get out there before any meters are pulled, anything like that. An inspection is not necessarily required. Right? So a lot of times we can fix the leak and get you back up and running. Some phone companies, uh, urge customers the list, go and get the inspection to make sure that everything’s okay. We’ve said this on numerous shows. A city inspections are literally the cheapest insurance that any company, or I’m sorry, any customer can have ever. You’re going to have a certified inspector to come out to your home. Check all the work that was done, make sure that it is up to code and up to snuff to their likings and then they’re going to pass it, and then you can go on about your days in saying that they’re going to go off the code book.

Absolutely right. They’re going to go off. We already know our career well, which means when we show up to your house, we’re going to know what is in code. We’re going to know what is out of code and if you call center point, they pull that meter and you have something out of code. We have no option but to fix that. If we allow that to go and we call for an city inspection, we’re the people that are going to get in trouble. Try Well, they won’t pass it for one. They’re going to have to get well, that’s exactly right, and then they’re going to be, I’m forgetting my glasses are in here, they’re going to be angry at us and we could get a fine. That’s right. If we do not get it fixed prior to them showing up, try. So that goes right into gas line inspection.

What to expect when the plumbing company acts actually gets out to the house. A couple of things we’re going to do is exactly what Richard said. We’re going to come do the home to make sure that your gas system is up to current code. Believe it or not, things change, right? Vowels become safer. Uh, they, they noticed that an old valve has something wrong with it, that they don’t want well, instead of a, as they become safer, they don’t just shut down every house that might have an old valve as becomes an issue. You change it out. I’m piping gets changed out because it gets old and rusted. Flexes get changed out for the same reason. So the first thing that you’re going to expect as a plumber’s gonna, come in, go to every gas appliance, check your gas piping to make sure that everything’s up to code, right?

Once that happens, they’re going to take a gauge. They’re going to disconnect your gas, they’re going to put a gauge on it, right? And they’re going to pressurize your system with air and they’re going to make sure that it holds to the appropriate amount of pressure. And if it holds your good to go. If it leaks. Now we’re coming into, okay, now we play, you know, troubleshooting time. Where do we think is leaking? We start isolation test. We start trying to limit down where we might see it. Obviously if you have an active leak, like option two that were telling you about, then you kind of smell it. Obviously we know in the house roundabout where it might be. So once all that happens, right, we, uh, we pressurize it, we either fix the leak or it’s already holding pressure. We fixed the Lakota upgrades.

That’s when the inspection takes place. We call the city out, they take care of it. Uh, if it’s the annual gas test, which was option one, then you know the homeowner, because y’all have the accountants, centerpoint, centerpoint, they activate you. Option two, depending on which way you called us. If you called us first or second, um, if centerpoint has this low, I’m sorry, taking the meter or lock you out. You have to call them again to have them come back out. So there’s a couple of hurdles I guess you could say in the second option that you’re going to have to deal with, but it’s absolutely well worth it. Again, when you’re talking about gas, it is a dangerous product. You want to make sure that, uh, it’s taken care of immediately. Correct. And just to add onto that, you guys need to understand that centerpoint is not in the business of service.

Plumbing companies are in the business of service. So when you’re talking about getting your home service for gas right there, providing the product, we provide the service, but if you smell gas right, because your, your, your gas line is actually leaking or it’s a fitting that’s actually leaking or there’s something wrong with the appliance. Absolutely. Call Center point. We’re not telling you not to do that, but just understand there’s a bunch of different events that are going to happen when you do that. If you’re comfortable, you call us first. We come out there, we can turn the gas system off, we can find that leak, we fix that leak. And we may or may not have to pull a permit and, and having an inspection depending on where that leak was located and depending on how we had to fix that, try so code requires us.

If we break into a gas system, a permit must be pulled. And what defines that is there’s a few definitions. So, but when you call center point first, typically you will always have to have a permit and there’s nothing wrong with that. Absolutely not it. It’s actually a great thing. And you know, at the end of the day you get a piece of paper and it says, Hey, look what I did. And when you go sell the house, look what I did pay me for the house. And that’s the way I always view that on a, on a city inspection. Yeah. You know, the gas line inspections or such, we get. Y’All have to understand, we get dozens of these in all three types every week. Again, like Richard said, the beginning of the show, if you have a question and you’re just not sure what step to take, call us.

We’re here to take every call, every question and guide you in the right direction. We just had a call last week and we haven’t had one of these in a while. It was over there in West University place and it was a pier and beam house, very low to the ground. Homeowners were smelling gas the past six months periodically, not all the time, so we went in there and it was a very difficult task to do the investigation because you can’t get underneath the house. It was literally six inches above grade and to be able to get underneath this house you had to escalate. But so through the progression of this, there was nothing above ground in the house leaking. Well, we had to tunnel underneath this house. We found a gas pipe. It had a penny inch hole in the gas pipe and it was leaking. It was like a ticking time bomb, you know? It was that bad, but there was enough air blowing underneath his house where it was not accumulating inside the house or underneath the house. But you guys, it is very important that when you smell something, you call us or you call center point. That’s the bottom line. That’s the bottom line.

Well, I think that’s all for today, right? I think we covered enough for you guys to be dangerous and I think we covered enough to know that when you have a problem, you call us and we are here to help you. Whether you use us or not, we are here for you. John Eccles and Richard side are here for you. That’s right. Thank you.

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