The Turning On
On Wednesday December 16th, we had an early visit from the gas company. The gentleman was there to turn us on!
As he walked towards the house I laughed and told him that we hoped he was going to be our Father Christmas and turn us on! (He had to run a pressure test on the lines, and until he did that, we had no way of knowing if we had any leaks or not.) If there were leaks, we’d have to hire a certified plumber to repair them.
The pressure test came back fine, both to the road, and inside the house, but the man wanted to verify gas flow to appliances, so asked about turning on the furnace.
“Errmmm … we don’t have power!”
“Oh!”, he replied, “I’m not going to be a very good Santa then – I can’t turn you on if I can’t test the line!”
There was a moment of silence while we dealt with the blow that had just been delivered.
“I don’t see how that’s possible”, I finally blurted out. “The house that we’re living in right now didn’t have power when the gas was turned on there. We know that, because when we finally could turn on the furnace, it didn’t work – We had a plumber tell us that we needed to bleed the lines”
Upon hearing this, and seemingly gauging us to both be handy, he walked over to the furnace, and turned the tap. You could hear the gas flow.
He then turned the tap for the water heater – again you could hear the flow, but he paused and listened to it for a bit longer. The pitch suddenly rose a bit. “Hear that? That’s the gas.”
He did the same up in the kitchen where the stove was going to go.
“If you have problems with gasflow in the line, we’ll not come back out, as I’ve tested everything to be ok – but I’m going to leave you guys turned on.”
We had our electrical inspection at 1:30pm that same day.
We’d hired a contractor to install a few new circuits, but when he gave the house a once-over, he saw that our existing breaker box did not have a master on/off switch, and as a result, said that we’d fail an inspection.
He not only replaced our 20-year-old breaker box, but also ran a new ground, updated the cabling to the road, and UPGRADED the supply from 100amps to 200 (we had a 200amp box that was being powered by a 100amp service).
The inspector looked at the new supply feed from the road, put a yellow ‘pass’ tag on it, and then walked inside. He didn’t look in much detail at any of the rooms, nor did he look around the basement ceiling at the wiring – he just unscrewed the front panel of the breaker box, checked all the wiring was correct, and left!!!
I called the electric company on Thursday morning to see if they had received the Certification from the City – they had not.
When I called them again after 5pm, they confirmed having received it, but could not give me any indication on when we might get our power turned on, other than to say that typical turn-around was 3-5 business days.
The lady gave me a telephone number for the local Ohio Edison office, and suggested that I call a man by the name of Robert, who would be able to provide me with a better time frame.
Bob had left the office for the day, so I left a message referencing the property address, pleading with him to get us turned on as soon as possible, because it was cold, and Christmas was just around the corner! He left me a message the following morning (Friday) to confirm that he had received the Work Order from the corporate office, and that while typical turn-around was 3-5 business days, they’d do their best to get us turned on before Christmas.
I was at work on Friday afternoon (around 4pm), when Frank called me. The neighbours had been calling him to tell him that an Ohio Edison truck was outside the house, and that power was being turned on!!
How thankful we were with a turn-around of less than 24 hours!!!
We wired in the thermostat on Saturday morning, and powered up the furnace. It took a few tries for the old thing to remember what to do, but within minutes, heat was eminating from the vents.
This morning (Tuesday, 22nd) we had a visit from the Internet company to get us online.
The on-demand water heater (still something of a novelty here in the US) is being fitted as this entry is typed, and the water will be turned on in the morning between 9 and 11 am.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 11:06 pm and is filed under House . You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
