For those affected by the Xcel gas outage... (Boulder: appliances, houses)

[Shuffler]

How to turn off and on your Gas at the Meter - YouTube

Now that the main regulator is repaired and the gas is flowing, Xcel wants us all to think it's difficult to turn on our gas meters at our homes. Most likely it's the result of some past idiot/mishap that resulted in this new risk management policy...

Pretty simple concept to turn our own gas on/off at the main valve. Prior to doing so, make sure supply lines are shut off to any gas appliances...water heater, cooktop, etc.

Like the vid shows, you should be able to turn on the main valve outside the house, slowly, until it stops ... typically a 45 or 90 degree turn...don't force it.

Go through the house to open supply lines one by one to let the gas flow back into the regulator/thermocouplers on the individual appliances ... such as the water heater, put in 'pilot' position & press/hold for a minute or so to bleed out any air ... if you smell the gas, it probably means the air is bled out and you can then light the unit.

Gas cooktop, turn on the supply and open up a burner and let it go until you can distinctly smell gas, then light them all and let them go for a bit.

Then turn the thermostat back on to let the furnace cycle up & auto-ignite ... most newer units don't require any manual lighting of a pilot, otherwise you can do the same by pressing & holding in pilot position for a minute or so, then pressing the piezo-electric igniter button or using a match/lighter.

If none of this works, you can always go back and carefully shut the main valve off again.

Friend of a friend in the affected area did this earlier this morning ... Xcel is overpromising/under-delivering on getting people's gas turned back on, and it's not rocket science. Just be careful, think, and don't be a dumbass...any homeowner should be able to do this safely.

We're doing okay for now with portable heaters, but will take action if service isn't restored by late afternoon.

[Mike from back east]

Wow. Just wow. The private enterprise utility provider flunks when it matters most. OOPS.

About 4000 of those 7200 gas customers were also without electricity. Double OOPS.

Meanwhile, here in COLO SPGS, our city-owned utility, with its relatively attractive prices for energy, is working fine without a hitch.

The city of Boulder wants to take over its utility services from Excel, this will add "energy" to that move.

[Shuffler]

Yeah Mike, and others have made a good point that most likely, we'll get a kick in the nuts/rate increase for the added cost of headcount/salary/OT for the 'high' level of service that we're seeing in this situation...

Way to go, Xcel ... over promise, under deliver.

[OhioToCO]

Hey, Shuffler, are you one of my neighbors?
My husband turned ours on after watching this video. It was about 4pm on Saturday, and we got tired watching Xcel trucks driving in and out of our neighborhood.
I think this was the most frustrating part - for whatever reason Xcel decided to go with some weird "plan" of turning people on, going by some made up lists of streets, instead of just going street to street, house to house in the same neighborhood. I bet they wasted at least 20% of the time driving around. The neighbors two streets down from us got theirs turned on at 9 am, the neighbors on a street two blocks up - at 3pm, and nobody showed up on ours until 9 am today (Sunday)! By then most of us already had gas on - either after turning it on ourselves or by chasing down the worker on a street, grabbing them and begging to come. Seriously, I know of at least 3 people who did that - moms with little kids whose husbands were out of town. I don't blame them!

I am really curious to know what that "plan" was, and who came up with it.

[Shuffler]

Xcel's response plan to restoring service was an epic fail. Sending different crews to the same neighborhood no less than four times was my observation. At one point on Saturday night there were 4-5 trucks/crews congregated across the road, shooting the breeze ... then they dispersed and the next day there were still houses on that street without service!

Saturday afternoon I was about to give up & do it myself when I spotted a truck across the road & more or less demanded that they get me back online (my next step was to do it myself) so they made an exception to deviate from their 'special map', which I really appreciated. Plus, I wanted to see if it took any special steps ... nope, he did exactly what the video showed, and exactly what I could have done myself as far as turning on the gas cooktop, water heater, furnace. No-brainer operation ... go figure.

Whoever devised this restoration plan for Xcel should lose their job, period.

[Katarina Witt]

My friend did his himself about 3 PM Saturday.