Residential gas leak in Boston-area home

Personal case. While Tom's house was being renovated, he stayed at his son's and detected a chronic outdoor gas leak that took the utility months to repair. One crew has 1,700 backlogged leaks.

When my gas pipe at my house — twenty years ago — the regulators make them sniff. They stick a probe down in the ground, and they have to do that about once every year in an older neighborhood. In a newer neighborhood they may not have to do it but once every three or five years, to find the gas leaks. Five percent of the gas is lost in distribution. When it gets really bad — last winter, while my house was being worked on, my wife and I lived at my son's house, same town. I was noticing this gas smell when I'd get up early in the morning to come in. They finally got around to fixing the leak. We told them we were smelling gas, and I would smell it early in the morning because the sun's not out, not a lot of wind at night. They just fixed it about three weeks ago. That one crew has 1,700 backordered leaks to fix, and it probably takes one or two days to fix a leak — you've got to dig a hole in the ground, find the leak. Job security.