sNOw GAS!

This was the view from my study this morning. A nice cold snowy day. Exactly the kind of day when you don't want to find that you have no gas for the central heating or cooking.

The house we are renting has a prepayment gas meter. I bought some more credits yesterday and at about 9:30 this morning went to add them to the meter. I put the card in and pressed the button only to be greeted by the message "Battery Failure".

So without a functioning battery the meter simply shut down and stopped dispensing gas, which means that the Aga turned itself off and there was no option of heating the house using the central heating.

I rang British Gas who told me that someone would be out within 4 hours to change the battery. Fortunately that proved to be true and within about three and a half hours the meter was working again. Good job they will come out so quickly otherwise we would have been seriously stuck as we rely on the gas for everything in the house. The only way I could have cooked would have been the microwave and the only heating would have been a small portable electric heater.