My smart meter fitting experience resulted in gas supply being capped as the engineer thought they identified a spillage with my gas fire appliance...

Hi there @gooner1511 ,

Sorry to hear this trouble!

The first thing that’s worth noting, is that it takes six to eight weeks for newly installed smart meters to be fully commissioned and activated. Once this happens, the meters can then start to submit readings properly, but only after this process has completed. One of the ways you’ll know it’s all up and running, will be when your IHD shows the correct tariff data. If you don’t see that yet, it’s still setting up.

As for your bills, provided you continue to make payments to your account each month as usual, you should build up credit and this will re-balance your account when the meter readings next go in. You won’t pick up any more of a bill than normal, as long as you’re still making payments.

In the meantime, see if you can pop some manual readings in when you get chance, since this should help to update your account and help the system to catch up.

Thanks for the reply,if I put gas meter readings in they'll be from the new meter which isn't even registered to my account so to avoid confusion I'll wait until this is hopefully progressed.

Blastoise186,

Yes pay the bill by DD so it's accumulated quite s bit so far.

Rather than a faulty appliance personally I'd say faulty diagnosis,which my gas engineer told me the installer most likely didn't have the correct gas Safe certificate.

Different certificate for different parts of gas,ie the installer has a cert for installing meters but probably hasn't a cert for gas fires,boilers, cookers etc so to be safe he's capped it off because he thought it was a safety issue. Which is potentially a lot of hassle to the consumer like in my case.

Safety first I agree but like my gas engineer said to leave me with no gas supply when a gas fire which is not being used is the problem condemn the fire and leave the supply on especially at this time of year.

Let's hope the meters work after all this 🤔

That would make a bit more sense, especially if there’s a way to isolate just the bad appliance without compromising safety. I’ll see if @Tim_OVO can feed that back internally.

Based on the mention of the 19th January, that makes your meters roughly three weeks into the commissioning process, so they should be around halfway through right now. I’d estimate the process should complete by the 24th March at the latest. If you still don’t see any progress by then, feel free to stop by again.

Yep that makes sense to me, @gooner1511 - but to be fair I’m not trained in either. As you say: safety first. My understanding is that the engineer can test appliances but is only responsible and covered insurance wise for the meter. Perhaps that’s why they recommended you hiring someone specifically. Or maybe it’s as simple as shutting off the fire appliance wasn’t possible or the less safe option….

I haven’t actually heard of the term ‘spillage’ in this context. Is this a term referring to a micro leak does anyone know?  

Tim_ovo,

I'm an electrician not a gas fitter but the way spillage was explained to me was there should be visible signs of gas / soot escape around the flue or surrounding the fire.

In my case there wasn't any gas or soot escape around the flue or fire it was a visible soot mark within an enclosed fire.

The first thing my gas engineer said was is there any smell of gas (there wasn't) which obviously is the main safety aspect.

The main thing in my case is if the meter installer hasn't got the relevant gas Safe module (ie install fires, boilers, stoves etc) he shouldn't be condemning something he shouldn't be inspecting.

I know with gas we eer on the side of caution which is correct but capping off the supply rather than an appliance which the meter installer considers faulty I find strange.

Maybe the gas Safe rules say this, like I've said I'm not a gas engineer, just my observations.

gooner1511

Over 2 months since smart meter fitting (Jan 19th) still no meter readings and still not the new correct meters (electricity is correct meter but not recording on my account).

Six to eight weeks to be commissioned,this has long since passed but no communication of any sort from OVO.

The Ihd still only displays electricity and not dual fuel.(no account details)

10 weeks this Tuesday and I'm no further forward than when I first posted

Will be ringing tomorrow for an update but I won't be holding my breath.

Wish me luck ;)

Gooner1511

Hi @gooner1511 ,

I’d also recommend checking your account in MyOVO first, before you contact the support team. It’s possible that your IHD might just need to be paired up with the meters, and if so the support team can do that for you fairly quickly.

One trick I’ve come across is to check the Meter Info to see if the details there match up - and also check the Supplier Contact details as well. If they don’t match with what you expect, that could indicate the IHD isn’t paired yet.

Hopefully this can get resolved soon though!

Wow, that is terrible. I have to say that this seems quite typical. It took me 6 weeks and several messages to support to get my smart meter to work, and this should have been a really standard and straight forward case. And even now it is not really working properly. Clearly the backend infrastructure is far from mature.