In praise of Gas Men

Yes, I really do want to sing the praise of the various contractors who have installed my new gas supply in the last ten days.  I'll even name the company - Southern Gas Networks - as they have exceeded all my expectations (OK, my expectations were pretty low!).  I only paid for the work in early January and they advised that they were expecting to come in 35 days; being a pessimist I assumed that was 35 working days - seven weeks - so I was quite surprised when they said they would come on Feb 3rd.  They even tried (twice) to come earlier as they wanted to keep their emergency team busy on something, but both times the team were then called off to an emergency... I was then pleased when they actually did come as promised on Feb 3rd, and by the next day had completed laying the pipe from the road to the house.  This is about 25 yards which required five hand-dug holes to connect together using their mole (see last week's blog), plus a hand-dug trench at either end (to connect to the main and to the meter box). 

So it was last week that I had a procession of men from their contractor ("Enterprise") who is clearly on a very strictly controlled contract.  Firstly two men came to do "the black stuff" (i.e. filling the hole in the road and pavement).  Then two more came who compacted the three holes which required concrete, in preparation for a third pair who actually laid the concrete.  Special mention here for the young lad who did the concrete (the new bit, right), for carefully copying the pattern in the rest of the concrete around the manhole cover, and doing an excellent job of it.  Finally another pair came (in two vans) to collect all the signage and fencing - all done by Feb 10th.

Having moved here from Central London, I was used to large development companies leaving huge holes with temporary traffic lights on busy roads for a week or three with no work happening.  In the case of the Shard (at London Bridge), there is even a road (St Thomas Street) which has been blocked one way for a couple of years, causing even greater traffic issues than already existed in the area.  Then, conflicting for about ten months, Thames Water dug up the adjacent Borough High Street to replace the water main....  To my mind, if they cannot build a place without causing huge inconvenience to thousands of people on a daily basis for years, I'm not sure why they should be given permission in the first place. [/rant]

Anyway, the meter came yesterday (Mon 14th) so job done.  I'm very happy with the utilities here!