said the first oversight occurred in 2011 when his client, ... had his gas-powered dryer replaced with an electric one, and the dryer installer failed to cap the gas line during the job, ...
The second mistake happened on Aug. 25, the day of the explosion, Rottier said, when tree trimmers working on Grittner’s property needed water and asked Grittner to open a water valve in the basement to allow for that.
But Grittner, according to what Rottier told 27 News, first accidentally opened a gas valve attached to the uncapped line instead, allowing gas to accumulate in the house and some hours later trigger the explosion at 6:45 pm.
Nothing disastrous in itself, but together...
Looking back, I think I've done as many two-step as one-step screw-ups.
Unused but uncapped lines can become problems. A condo owner in my HOA got pissed off at bad tenants, so he stripped the place, and has kept it so for years. No carpet, no stove- just a concrete slab inside. Among the things he did was to disconnect a toilet from the floor. However, he didn't cap the sewer line to the toilet, but just put a board over it. An upstairs unit had a sewer line back up. Result: the uncapped sewer line didn't stop a lot of sewerage flowing into the unit. It cost several thousand dollars to clean up. As the owner was negligent in not capping the sewer line, he paid most of the cost.
ReplyDeleteKeeping the place stripped without a tenant isn't cost effective, as he could recoup the cost of rehabbing it with a year or so of rent. But that isn't my problem.