While most homes in Ontario likely have natural gas service, there are still many that have never been connected to natural gas lines. If this is the case, or you’re looking to get natural gas service to a newly constructed home or business, here are the steps to follow to initiate natural gas service.
1. Contact Your Local Natural Gas Utility
There are three natural gas utilities in Ontario: Enbridge Gas, Union Gas, and Natural Resource Gas, with the vast majority of people receiving service from Enbridge. The OEB’s natural gas utilities page can help you identify your local utility.
Once you’ve found your utility, give them a call and ask for their customer service department, and ask them if they provide service at your address. If not, then you’re unfortunately out of luck. Otherwise, you’ll be able to proceed.
2. Have a Licensed Contractor Install Gas Appliances
If you’re having gas service set up, you likely want to have gas appliances installed in your home. It’s extremely important that you employ a contractor licensed to work on HVAC systems. All qualified HVAC contractors in Ontario are required to be registered with the Technical Standards & Safety Authority (TSSA), which offers a contractor locator tool on their website.
3. Apply for Natural Gas Service
You or your contractor will have to submit an application for natural gas service to the local utility. It’s probably best to have your contractor handle this, if possible, as the application requires a number of technical details and measurements.
4. Open an Account with Your Gas Utility
Now it’s time to call your utility again and ask to open an account. A worker from the utility company will come out and check the layout of your property in order to determine the difficulty of installing a gas line.
Usually, the utility will install a gas line for no cost. However, Enbridge and Union Gas charge a fee if the distance from the front wall of your home or business to the property line is greater than 18 metres for Enbridge customers, or 30 metres for Union Gas customers. In this case, you may have to pay a service fee, and you may be billed in cases of particularly complex installations.
5. Gas Connection Installation
Unfortunately, gas utilities always have a backlog of work, so it will likely take about 7 to 12 weeks after the approval of your service application for workers to come out and install your gas line and gas meter.
6. Appliance Installation
At this point, your contractor will come out and install your gas appliances, now that the necessary lines and connections have been installed.
7. Gas Equipment Inspection
Now that everything is in place, a representative of your utility company will come out and check over all of the natural gas equipment, appliances, and the gas meter. If you want this done as soon as possible, it’s sometimes possible to schedule this inspection for the same day as the appliance installation. Contact your utility’s customer service department to schedule an appointment.
