December 23, 2009
We came home the other day to the delightful, cheery smell of a house full of propane.
It turns out that even though boring old building codes say your gas meter should be at least an inch away from adjacent surfaces, our former homeowners apparently needed that inch real bad, so ours was right up against the brick.
Now, bricks, you might know because you’re smarter than those very bricks, are water-porous. And if you give it enough time, that water does very exciting things to common household items like, to pick one entirely at random, gas meters.
When the Enbridge guy came (quickly and well-equippedly, I should add, which made me very happy) to find the leak a piece of the back of the meter just scraped off in his hands, corroded right through. This was easily dealt with as these things go, fortunately, because we’re in the middle of a basement reno. The washer and dryer were out of the way, so he had easy access to it to the main.
As part of that basement reno, we’ve replaced said old washer and dryer. And just moments ago, the fellow I gave the dryer to tells me that he believes the dryer will be much more efficient, now that he’s pulled the rust-stained, half-scorched hand towel out of the vent pipe. The burn marks on it seem to indicate that there has at least once actually been a fire there, isolated to the vent pipe in which he found it.
That vent pipe ran up right next to my gas main on its way out the side of the house.
Dear former homeowners, I hate you so much. Every now and then I stop what I’m doing and just take a moment to hate you just a little bit more. If I thought really hard about you, bile would bleed from my eyes.