If you’re just looking for how to turn your gas on, click here to go straight to the instructions without the lengthy intro

This was a pretty interesting weekend. And by interesting, I mean crappy. This was for several reasons, many of which are of the type that if you know, you know. One thing that really made this weekend crappy, however, was that the gas got shut off at my apartment.

I know, I know, it sounds like a stupid mistake on my part, and maybe it was, but I’ve never lived anywhere where I had to take care of utilities myself. Nor did I think about the fact that my predecessors would cancel the service as opposed to letting me transfer the account to my name. Anyway, that’s beside the point because my gas was definitely off. This is very bad, mostly because I hate cold showers, and of course, the hot water heater runs on natural gas. So I called the gas company and scheduled a time for them to come out and turn my gas back on.

Unfortunately, it was Friday afternoon, so the next available time was on Monday. “No big deal” I thought. I mean, I can stay in SLC for the weekend until the gas gets turned on, so at most, I’ll only have to take one cold shower on Monday morning right? Well, as you would probably expect, that’s not exactly how it turned out. Monday morning, after a freezing cold shower, I walked out of my apartment confident that I would have hot water by the end of the day.

Alas, it was not to be. I returned late that evening after a hard day of work and consulting, only to find that while the gas company had removed the seals from my gas meter, they hadn’t actually turned the gas on. There was a big, scary-looking yellow tag warning me that only specially trained and experienced individuals were allowed to turn the valve on, or else I would see my residence reduced to a smoldering crater the size of a football field. So, being the naturally cautious individual that I am, I fiddled with the valve, banged on it a bit with a wrench, twisted some stuff, and was miserably unsuccessful, in that I couldn’t seem to get any gas running through the pipe.

After several minutes of this, I decided to ask Google about how to turn my own gas on. Unfortunately, every query only turned up articles on how to turn your gas off, with the same dire warnings about trying to turn your gas back on without proper expertise and training. So I went to bed with the sinking feeling that I would have to endure yet another freezing cold shower in the morning.

So today I got up, jumped into the shower, shuddered my way through my second consecutive frigid shower, and went to work, determined to call the gas company to find out what it was that these “experts” knew. After talking to an amused secretary (I told her I wanted to get my gas turned on because I couldn’t handle the showers anymore) I was transferred to the tech department to talk to a trained individual, who would walk me through the process of turning my own gas on. Here’s the dialog that ensued:

Me: So I need some training on how to turn my gas on.

Tech: Get a wrench and turn the valve a quarter turn in either direction.

Me: That’s it?

Tech: Yep. Thanks for calling.

Sure enough, I went out and turned the valve a quarter turn to the right, and sure enough, I had gas. To my credit I did the same thing last night and couldn’t make it work, probably because I hadn’t received the proper training. So the two cold showers were pretty crummy, but hey, now I’m one of those people that the tag talked about! I’m a super-duper highly-trained, expert gas turner-on-er. So, if you ever get one of those scary yellow tags and you need to have an expert turn it on, you can give me a call. I promise not to blow our house up.

Since I couldn’t find it anywhere on Google, Here’s how to turn your gas meter on:

1. Call your gas company and make sure that they’ve taken the seals off of your meter and that it’s ready to be turned on. (simple, I know, but hey, gotta be thorough)
2. Make sure that everything that uses gas is turned off inside your house. This is important. Safety first.
3. Get a crescent wrench (one of those adjustable plumber-types should be fine)
4. Go out to your meter and find the valve. It’s up one of the pipes that lead up from the meter. Mine was on the left pipe.
5. Use the wrench to turn the valve a quarter turn to either the left or the right so that the valve is perpendicular to the pipe. Apparently it’s important to do this slowly.
6. Go inside and follow the directions that should be on each gas-using appliance for lighting that appliance. Don’t open the valve for any appliance until you are ready to light the appliance. IF YOU SMELL GAS, DO NOT LIGHT ANYTHING. MAKE SURE ALL GAS VALVES IN YOUR HOUSE ARE CLOSED AND WAIT 30 MINUTES UNTIL THE SMELL IS COMPLETELY GONE. This is critical to avoid turning your house into the aforementioned crater.

Disclaimer: Towering Intellect, nor its author, can be held liable in any way for any use of this information, and any damage, physically, mentally, emotionally, or otherwise to your person or posessions that may or may not occur as a result of use of this information.