How illegal was this gas condition?

I am on my co-op bosrd and found out that a few years ago the building manager worked with a contractor to hide an illegal gas repair from the board for months. During a project to replace our radiator pipes, a plumber noticed that a connection on the main gas line had a leak that was previously “fixed” by someone smearing a big wad of grease over the leak. Apparently that illegal fix occured a long time earlier.

The contractors told the manager about the grease-repair, and instead of telling the board the manager worked with this plumbing contractor to hide the condition for six months while they worked out a plan. Eventually the manager told the board that our gas main needed replacement, but never mentioned the leak. He had a pretty clever plan in mind to not repair anything but instead just install new pipes parallel to the old ones, and then bottle the building and do a rapid switchover from the old pipes to the new pipes in one day with DOB and ConEd to avoid a long gas outage. The plumber and manager were apparently working on this plan over those six months. Cl ever yes, but when I found out from our super that the manager hid this dangerous condition for months I became livid. The super got into a dispute with the manager and showed me evidence of this gas issue, which is pretty compelling.

Of course we need to fire the manager. That’s obvious. My question is: was it illegal of the manager or contractor to keep the gas running with that type of “grease” repair? Did they violate the law or was it just unethical to not tell us? Is there any agency that should be informed about this, assuming we have enough proof of what happened?

penny

in General Discussion 5 years and 3 months ago

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Master Plvmber | 5 years and 3 months ago

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My impression is that you don’t understand this well enough to make an informed decision but you’ve decided it’s “obvious” you need to fire the Building Manager for what may very well have been a rational decision to address and monitor the condition while permanent solutions were being worked out. For many years that compound “grease” was what National Grid/Keyspan/BUG used for temporary leak repairs while owners made arrangements for field corrections by licensed plumbers. New Jersey gas utilities still sometimes use it. As a Licensed Master Plumber myself I’ll go on record as saying that of course all gas leaks should be isolated and corrected immediately but the current situation of gas hysteria in our city is a powerful driver for making practical decisions on how best to approach those corrections. Finally, there are levels of gas leaks. Not all are potentially catastrophic, but yes, they still need to be repaired asap. If the city were to go from building to building in New York confirming the absolute tightness of gas piping systems they’d have to shut half the buildings down, which is probably why they haven’t done that already.