The regulated private gas industry has become fragmented from a consumer's standpoint. The grid pipeline and metering is managed by National Grid (Metering), but the consumer deals with the energy companies. There are wholesale gas suppliers and installing companies who sit within the supply chain. This means that you may see either one or a number of different companies in one transaction.
Question: how many companies does it take to move and upgrade a gas meter?
Answer: it all depends. (In my case the answer was three)
You may have an older diaphragm meter that reads in ft3, dating from the mid 90's. The gas companies are reluctant generally to change meters that are less than 20 years old. You may be offered a gas calibration check, but it is unlikely to be worth spending this money unless something is clearly wrong.
An older gas meter, such as the ones below, might last 30 years if it is refurbished.
I know of someone who had their meter moved two years ago, but the gas company installed a different ft3 refurbished meter dating from 1995, rather than install a new meter. This practice is accepted by OfGEM.
Contact your utility gas provider. They should be willing to do an exchange as a 'Customer Requested Change'. This should cost less than £100 including VAT and take 2 to 3 weeks. An installer will contact you and the charge gets added to your next
bill.
It is metric, with easy display dials. It can be easily remote monitored via a pulse output (reed switch insert), making it accessible to logging devices that are appearing.
In contrast the older meters (R5 U6) may or may not have an accessible reed switch, might have a silvered 0 on the lowest digit that can be read by an optical monitor, or alternatively may have no easy way to link to a remote monitor.
Diaphragm valves are generally reliable over long periods of time (unlike analogue electricity meters) so the benefits of a modern meter really come into their own in conjunction with a real-time monitoring unit.
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