Thanksgiving eve gas leak nightmare

[Michael Wentzel]

Relaxing on my couch on Wednesday evening and my property manager calls. This is unusual and she has some bad news. In our newly acquired 4-unit building, one of the tenants smelled gas and called the gas company. The gas company came and found 2-3 leaks in each unit. They promptly cut the gas to the whole building. No more heaters, no more gas stoves, no more hot water.

I jumped in my car, purchased two electric heaters for each unit, a $50 gift card for each unit and drove the 40 minutes to the property. Although it was after 10 pm, I was able to meet with three of the tenants and give them the heaters, the gifts cards and commiserate a bit. I assured them I had no idea and would do everything I could to get it fixed as soon as possible. One lady said the gas was cut with her half-cooked turkey in the oven. Thankfully they all seemed to have family living in town so they could go over there on Thanksgiving.

I got home around midnight. I did nothing Thanksgiving day. Friday morning my property manager jumped into action and got a licensed HVAC company out to the house. They started repairing the leaks and moving the gas meter to bring it up to code. If all goes well, the regional building guys can come out on Monday to approve the repairs and then the gas company turn the gas back on. I'm fearing $2000 to $4000 out-of-pocket for the repairs. The good news is that the tenants seem in good spirits and it is such a good building I would have willing paid $10,000 more for it than I did. Nobody wants to drop a few thousand dollars on repairs, but at least nobody was hurt and we should be in good shape when the repairs are done.

Questions...

1) Am I a bad owner for not trying to get someone out there on Thanksgiving to start the repairs?

2) Does the process (repairs, regional building board, gas company) and costs seem inline for those of you who have dealt with this before?

3) Does my inspector bare any liability for not catching 8-12 gas leaks or is he just a bad inspector?

4) Any chance insurance covers gas leaks?

Please tell me this only happens once in 100 years. I told my wife that as I left the house at 9:00 pm on Thanksgiving eve.

Mike

[Aaron Mazzrillo]

If you're going all in, go all in. If you're going to repipe, get the units separately metered now while you're doing the work. Master metered gas sucks. If there are individual meters, you wouldn't be eating this whole house renovation right now. Plus, separating them out now will increase your cash flow. If any heating systems are on those meters, you'll be saving A LOT of money. I think my heat bill for my 4 unit in Utah that is on master metered gas runs me more than $1K per year.

I think the real question here is; why is your tenant only 1/2 way through cooking a turkey at 9 o'clock at night? Sounds like someone fishing for attention.