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In Which PG&E Continues to Be Evil & Life Continues On
PG&E. Friday night, after our gas was turned back on 14 hours and 4 phone calls to PG&E after the problem was fixed, our house seemed to really be having troubles heating up. I worried that something might be wrong with our gas flow when I went to bed and I worried when I woke up ... and though I took my time coming downstairs, it turned out my worries were right, because the thermostat was sitting five degrees under the temperature it was supposed to be at.
PG&E had managed to mess up our natural gas flow, two days now after the problems started.
I didn't realize yet that they'd done so on purpose.
As I stood there in my bathrobe, I noticed there was a PG&E guy right outside. He had apparently just got the gas on for one of the condos next door who had gone a second night without heat, presumably because they didn't squeak their wheels as much as we did. So I hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, but then remembering the four calls to PG&E the previous day, and the way that their customer support line seems to be trained to lie to, deter, and mislead their customers, I realized this was my last, best chance to solve the problem. So I rushed outside in my bathrobe and waved at the PG&E guy, who was now in his truck, a few minutes from driving away.
(He and I would never comment on my bathrobedness.)
Listening to the problem he came in and looked at all our gas appliances, which really wasn't helpful, and then he decided that he should measure the gas pressure outside, which was. He said it should be 7 inches water column pressure, and after he popped our gas valve off and put some tool up against it, he said it was just barely over. And then he said, "Oh, I see what happened." (Success!) (Success?)
Well, success until he started explaining. He said that our gas line was probably put in during the '60s or '70s (which fits with the age of our floor heater) and that it was likely put in at 8.5 inches water column pressure. He emphasized that we were only paying for 7 inches water column pressure, and said that since PG&E just had to pay $13.5 billion dollars for all the people they murdered and burnt out of their homes last year (he didn't phrase it exactly like that, but I translated in my head), they were trying to scrimp and save pennies whenever they could. So, they took the opportunity of our gas line emergency where we were all without heat in the dead of winter for 30 hours or so to also cut our gas pressure from 8.5 inches water column pressure to 7. Because, multitasking. (You can screw the customers while also screwing the customers!) And so the modern appliances like our stove and tankless water heater were mostly fine, because that was the gas pressure level they expected, but our heater wasn't.
Now fortunately PG&E guy had a solution: he said the heater should have a regulator which determines the amount of gas that goes into it. All I needed to do was adjust it up a bit. He said he couldn't do it, because PG&E refuses to accept the liability of adjusting gas levels in a house (perhaps remembering how they blew up San Bruno in 2010 and killed another 10 people there), but he popped open our stove, showed me the regulator there, and explained that I just needed to twist up the similar screw in the heater regulator. ("That's the scary part, though," he said. "Do you turn it a quarter turn or a half turn? Because you don't want to blow up your house.")
So after he left I crawled under the house to see if it was doable by me. It turned out that the whole flow mechanism for the heater was readily accessible (meaning that anyone could crawl under our house and blow it up), and though the regulator screw wasn't quite the same, I found a Youtube video that explained how to adjust it.
So I had to go buy a screwdriver (I knew I shouldn't pack it!) and then in the evening I crawled under the house a second time and tuned up the regulator an eighth of a turn, because I was willing to do it in little increments to get it right. And this evening the house is staying warmer. The morning will really be the test, but if I have to go crawling and adjust it up a tiny bit more tomorrow, so be it.
We have a screwdriver.
(And screw PG&E.)
Hiking. It was 57 degrees out and sunny, so I got one last(?) little hike in this afternoon, between my crawls under the house. Nothing big, just up the Derby Trail above Clark Kerr, then across Panoramic Hill, then down the Lower Fire Trail out to Centennial Drive. It's maybe an hour and a half hike, including the back and forth from our house (since the hills are about a mile east of us), but it's all stuff I've walked a lot in days past (and in fact I did most of that hike at least one evening a week in 2017 or so), so it was nice to do it again.
Cleaning. And our cleaning continues on. I got the Harry Potter closet cleaned out Friday morning, when I was trying to stay warm in our very cold house, and that closet had our last bookcase in the house, which is now gone.
Then today I was hoping to get the kitchen reorganized after Kimberly managed to get rid of our microwave cart yesterday (which I did) and to get my office the rest of the way cleared out (which I did not, but it's close).
Once I get my office the rest of the way clear (hopefully tomorrow) we are getting very close to the end. We'll mainly have cleaning supplies, food, and other sundries which we haven't finished using and/or disposing of, and then the final furniture which we planned to use to the end. There are also still a few things which we hope Kimberly can get rid of in Craig's List and Freecycle posting, but that'll either happen or not.
So we thought that things would get a lot quieter once our furniture went out of the house two weeks ago now, and that hasn't really happened, but at least we're getting to the point where we'll be able to turn off the lights in the house and exit without a panic in the last few days.
Hopefully.
Because we've only got three days left.
PG&E had managed to mess up our natural gas flow, two days now after the problems started.
I didn't realize yet that they'd done so on purpose.
As I stood there in my bathrobe, I noticed there was a PG&E guy right outside. He had apparently just got the gas on for one of the condos next door who had gone a second night without heat, presumably because they didn't squeak their wheels as much as we did. So I hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, but then remembering the four calls to PG&E the previous day, and the way that their customer support line seems to be trained to lie to, deter, and mislead their customers, I realized this was my last, best chance to solve the problem. So I rushed outside in my bathrobe and waved at the PG&E guy, who was now in his truck, a few minutes from driving away.
(He and I would never comment on my bathrobedness.)
Listening to the problem he came in and looked at all our gas appliances, which really wasn't helpful, and then he decided that he should measure the gas pressure outside, which was. He said it should be 7 inches water column pressure, and after he popped our gas valve off and put some tool up against it, he said it was just barely over. And then he said, "Oh, I see what happened." (Success!) (Success?)
Well, success until he started explaining. He said that our gas line was probably put in during the '60s or '70s (which fits with the age of our floor heater) and that it was likely put in at 8.5 inches water column pressure. He emphasized that we were only paying for 7 inches water column pressure, and said that since PG&E just had to pay $13.5 billion dollars for all the people they murdered and burnt out of their homes last year (he didn't phrase it exactly like that, but I translated in my head), they were trying to scrimp and save pennies whenever they could. So, they took the opportunity of our gas line emergency where we were all without heat in the dead of winter for 30 hours or so to also cut our gas pressure from 8.5 inches water column pressure to 7. Because, multitasking. (You can screw the customers while also screwing the customers!) And so the modern appliances like our stove and tankless water heater were mostly fine, because that was the gas pressure level they expected, but our heater wasn't.
Now fortunately PG&E guy had a solution: he said the heater should have a regulator which determines the amount of gas that goes into it. All I needed to do was adjust it up a bit. He said he couldn't do it, because PG&E refuses to accept the liability of adjusting gas levels in a house (perhaps remembering how they blew up San Bruno in 2010 and killed another 10 people there), but he popped open our stove, showed me the regulator there, and explained that I just needed to twist up the similar screw in the heater regulator. ("That's the scary part, though," he said. "Do you turn it a quarter turn or a half turn? Because you don't want to blow up your house.")
So after he left I crawled under the house to see if it was doable by me. It turned out that the whole flow mechanism for the heater was readily accessible (meaning that anyone could crawl under our house and blow it up), and though the regulator screw wasn't quite the same, I found a Youtube video that explained how to adjust it.
So I had to go buy a screwdriver (I knew I shouldn't pack it!) and then in the evening I crawled under the house a second time and tuned up the regulator an eighth of a turn, because I was willing to do it in little increments to get it right. And this evening the house is staying warmer. The morning will really be the test, but if I have to go crawling and adjust it up a tiny bit more tomorrow, so be it.
We have a screwdriver.
(And screw PG&E.)
Hiking. It was 57 degrees out and sunny, so I got one last(?) little hike in this afternoon, between my crawls under the house. Nothing big, just up the Derby Trail above Clark Kerr, then across Panoramic Hill, then down the Lower Fire Trail out to Centennial Drive. It's maybe an hour and a half hike, including the back and forth from our house (since the hills are about a mile east of us), but it's all stuff I've walked a lot in days past (and in fact I did most of that hike at least one evening a week in 2017 or so), so it was nice to do it again.
Cleaning. And our cleaning continues on. I got the Harry Potter closet cleaned out Friday morning, when I was trying to stay warm in our very cold house, and that closet had our last bookcase in the house, which is now gone.
Then today I was hoping to get the kitchen reorganized after Kimberly managed to get rid of our microwave cart yesterday (which I did) and to get my office the rest of the way cleared out (which I did not, but it's close).
Once I get my office the rest of the way clear (hopefully tomorrow) we are getting very close to the end. We'll mainly have cleaning supplies, food, and other sundries which we haven't finished using and/or disposing of, and then the final furniture which we planned to use to the end. There are also still a few things which we hope Kimberly can get rid of in Craig's List and Freecycle posting, but that'll either happen or not.
So we thought that things would get a lot quieter once our furniture went out of the house two weeks ago now, and that hasn't really happened, but at least we're getting to the point where we'll be able to turn off the lights in the house and exit without a panic in the last few days.
Hopefully.
Because we've only got three days left.
no subject
In any case, good luck with the move, and I hope you're happier and warmer when it's all done!
no subject
I suspect the buying-different-pressures thing is something that most Americans have never heard of. But apparently different pressures are sold to us residential proles and to commercial establishments, but it's just a standard thing that no one ever talks about.