Sorry for the story, but this is a good one at my house over the cold snap.
So for the longest at my house, by the AC's outside, it smelled like gas. Mine and my neighbor's units are back to back, with a fence, and we have both our meters in that area.
He installed a generator a while ago and had to have the gas company out a couple times to fix things; including one time where they cut gas off until it was fixed. So any smell we attributed to him and their house.
The cold snap in Houston recently made our bathroom (meter on the outside of bath) smell more like gas. Finally spouse wakes me up around 3am and says we have a gas leak and need to call NOW. I talk them off the ledge and say I'll call in the morning, after we've eaten and dressed and such.
Get CNP out there to test and the hand meter shows nothing on my meter, a small leak on the pressure tap point on my neighbor's meter (tightened and it's not leaking anymore). But as I stand between the two condensers in my yard, it starts smelling REALLY bad.
So the tech starts probing and only finds one hole that the meter goes 'off' on. All the other holes are duds. But on the plus side, he hits my sprinkler supply line to that zone and now I have water going EVERYWHERE. So I go find the leak and then find out, this IS a blessing. All the holes are full of water and now you can see 3 holes bubbling. So this makes the repair "emergency" and CNP comes out (eventually).
They start digging. I had saved photos of 811 before so I knew the general location of the line. They dig and then one digger says "Hey, the gas line is here right? Why is there red?". So they all stop, pour soap and see bubbles. Keep digging and find...a sewer line. Oh and the new fiber internet is laid on top (green). So in an 8" space I have a 4" sewer line, a gas line next to it and the internet on top. They eventually dig enough to find the leak and repair it. What was leaking you say?
A frigging shark bite fitting and splice in the ground. A while back, previous owners redid the bathroom and, I assume, they moved the sewer line (demo'ed a tub and made the shower bigger) to go outside then tie into the main line. In the process the plumber or whomever nicked the line. Rather than call it in, they 'patched' it themselves. Fast forward to now and it finally leaks enough due to age/cold/reasons and it is FINALLY patched correctly.
Now I just get to fix the sprinkler supply line..... Or get CNP to pay me back for that (HA!).
~egon
