Solved

No gas appliances are working - how do I tell if my Secure Liberty smart meter is off supply?

  • 24 January 2021
  • 9 replies
  • 4111 views

We have no gas supply to our property. The boiler is displaying fault codes indicating lack of supply and there is no gas at the hob. Note that there is a known issue with a (Cadent) mid-low pressure regulator at our property and this is due to be removed 17Feb. OVO will be fitting a mid-domestic pressure regulator at the meter the same day.

I called Cadent. They asked me to look at the meter and press button A. When I told them the meter displayed VEND mode, they said they could not help and that my only next step was to call OVO. Unfortunately, there seems to be no number for OVO that works on a Sunday!

I cannot see from the forum what to do. VEND mode seems to relate to pre-payment. We pay by DD and are in credit and have been for a long time.

I am confident the issue is probably with the Cadent valve (again) and I explained all this to the Cadent helpline today but they insisted the VEND mode display means I have to contact OVO. I have emailed OVO and got a reply including “Our aim is to reply within 3 working days.”

Is there anything I can do on a Sunday other than burn electricity to stay warm until I can call OVO once phone lines are open?

 

icon

Best answer by Blastoise186 24 January 2021, 13:13

View original

9 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +1

Welcome to the forum @SandN .

I can try to help you with checking a few things here. Could you wake up the display on your gas meter and take a photo of the display please? If you pop that on your next reply, we can check to see whether the meter appears to be working properly.

The Support Team won’t be back in the office until the morning, but forum volunteers such as myself are active all the time. We’ll try to advise if we can.

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +1

Updated on 06/04/23 by Emmanuelle_OVO

Thanks @SandN !

 

I have good news for you. I can confirm that your meter shows the Supply Status as ON. As such, the valve should be OPEN and it is allowing gas to flow through as normal.

 

VEND Mode is also not the cause of this issue. While it does relate to Prepayment/Pay-As-You-Go customers, VEND Mode is purely for entering UTRN (Unique Transaction Reference Numbers) top-up codes manually if the top-up doesn’t get delivered automatically for some reason. That’s all it does. Since you’re in Credit Mode, it has no effect anyway.

 

If you look at the display you’ll see a flame symbol to the left of the HAN letters. Next to that is the status which in your case currently shows ON, which is what you should be seeing if the supply is on. The other statuses are READY (valve closed but ready to re-open) and OFF (valve closed and locked out). But they’re not usually relevant to Credit mode.

 

I’d suggest telling Cadent that your supply is on at the gas meter and that it’s not a meter fault. I hope this helps with sorting this out.

 

Plus: 

The other advice I can give is that you can also wake up your gas meter a different way, without going into VEND Mode.

Please note that this mainly applies to the Secure branded gas meters, and may not work for other brands.

Button B can be used to wake up the display and enter auto-scroll mode. Unlike Button A, this method will trigger the display to wake up and scroll through a few things like your meter readings, before going back to sleep mode automatically after around 60 seconds. You can get out of VEND Mode the same way - if you don’t press anything the meter will eventually timeout and go back to sleep.

It sounds to me as if Cadent either don’t understand how VEND Mode works, or got confused somehow. Just because VEND Mode exists doesn’t automatically mean you’re in Prepayment Mode, let alone out of credit!

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +1

The other advice I can give is that you can also wake up your gas meter a different way, without going into VEND Mode.

Please note that this mainly applies to the Secure branded gas meters, and may not work for other brands.

Button B can be used to wake up the display and enter auto-scroll mode. Unlike Button A, this method will trigger the display to wake up and scroll through a few things like your meter readings, before going back to sleep mode automatically after around 60 seconds. You can get out of VEND Mode the same way - if you don’t press anything the meter will eventually timeout and go back to sleep.

It sounds to me as if Cadent either don’t understand how VEND Mode works, or got confused somehow. Just because VEND Mode exists doesn’t automatically mean you’re in Prepayment Mode, let alone out of credit!

Hi Blastoise186 - Thanks for your help. I called Cadent again and the reassurance that I had “spoken to OVO” to confirm there was no meter fault seems to have tipped the balance and they agreed to log the fault. Engineer due within 2 hours. I will let you know what happens...

Userlevel 7
Badge +1

No worries, I’m glad I could help. :sunglasses:

Hopefully an engineer can fix that valve and get your supply working again. I’ll be here if you need any further help.

Userlevel 7
Badge +1

Oh, that reminds me actually. I kinda have to make sure the old elf n safety man is happy with me too. And he often insists that I say this next bit to make the legal eagles happy (unless you want a fireball or an explosion that is). :wink:

While you’re waiting for the engineer to arrive, can I please recommend that you double check all gas appliances are properly turned off and that nothing which may use your gas supply tries to do so until after the engineer has completed the job.

If you’ve got any sensitive electronics such as computers (or overpowered Wi-Fi Routers like mine), I’d also recommend shutting them down and unplugging them just before the engineer arrives, just in case the electricity supply needs to be turned off temporarily.

Hi Blastoise186. No worries, no explosions here. I turned the control valve off. Cadent engineer number 1 is here and has confirmed my suspicion that the medium-low pressure regulator had tripped. He can’t reset it (possibly frozen) so is waiting for engineer 2 to arrive. As before, thank you for helping me find the words to give Cadent so they accepted the case. The OVO website could usefully be enhanced with a few basic check points on the topic to avoid others getting frustrated. (That said, I appreciate the fault I faced is a little unusual as most customers don’t have 2 regulators in their supply)

Userlevel 7
Badge +1

Anytime! :hugging:

Hopefully that valve can be replaced today rather than waiting any longer.

As for adding more guides, I can’t do much myself in terms of getting a guide on the main website, but I can certainly get @Tim_OVO to delegate that job to someone internally. What I can do however, is look at creating something on the forums as a future Tutorial topic.

I’m currently working on another one at the moment (once I actually get time to draft it!) for something else, but I’ve noted this down for later. Mind you, the master of @Transparent loves these technical ones…

If you have any ideas of your own for useful forum content such as guides that we don’t have yet, feel free to suggest them and we’ll be happy to take a look. Or if you’re feeling brave, we’re always happy to accept contributions from anyone so feel free to give it a shot - you might even get a reward...

But yeah, if you ever need help again, feel free to stop by and we’ll get you sorted.

Reply