If you turn off the gas to your house, why do you need a gas company employee to turn it back on?

Question

What are the problems and/or dangers? What does the gas company employee do to prevent those problems from happening?

Answer 1

i agree with the top two people also but to add on the guys statement of a gas leak getting bigger, if that happens and the pilot is not lit, you can say bye bye to your house and potentially a few of your neighbors depending if your local fire department is quick and gets there before the fire spreads to your neighbors houses.

Answer 2

I agree with the previous answer, but I would like to ad that gas run household appliances generally have a pilot. Newer ones have a pilot on demand, but older appliance have a constant burning pilot that goes out once you turn off the gas. Gas company employees are trained to determine the difference. If you have an appliance, such as my rooftop a/c, heating unit which has a constant burning pilot, and the gas goes off, you may need to manually relight the pilot, if not, results in a minor gas leak, which could become a major gas leak if a cold day comes around and you turn it on.

Answer 3

The gas co. employee has a machine called a "sniffer" that can detect gas leaks of very small size and prevent explosions.

If your system is out of code then he can determine that and prevent it being turned on until it is upgraded.

It is illegal to turn on an out of code appliance.