PUNE REAL ESTATE TIPS
AVOID PIPED LPG GAS HOMES
ARE YOU THINKING OF BUYING A HOUSE IN PUNE
AVOID A PROJECT WITH PIPED GAS
Musings of a Clueless Novice Self-Styled Property Guru Part
17
By
VIKRAM KARVE
In recent times, many builders in Pune offer Piped LPG Cooking Gas
Facility in their residential projects.
In the Piped Gas System, or Reticulated LPG System as it is called,
domestic cooking gas cylinders are supplied in bulk to the “Gas Bank” of the
residential housing colony and consequently to the customer’s kitchen through a
pipeline network connected to the cylinder bank in the residential society
premises.
This is a much more efficient, economical, safe, reliable, logistically
convenient, cost-effective method of supplying cooking gas rather than each
apartment having individual gas cylinders, and, most importantly, it saves
precious LPG.
Obviously, buying a house in such
a residential complex having piped gas costs more since the builder has to
set up the infrastructure (gas banks, gas pipelines, safety valves, meters etc)
and he is going to pass on the cost to the buyer. In addition, there are annual
maintenance costs as well which you will have to pay the society.
I too bought a home in one such project, and I must say that, as
compared to having individual cylinders in each house, I found that piped gas
is extremely hassle-free and convenient and the system was running efficiently.
So, though one had to pay more for a house in a society with piped gas,
at that point of time, it seemed worth it, at least in the long run.
Hence, most consumers surrendered their earlier LPG connections and opted
for the piped gas facility.
Now, due a sudden absurd change in policy by the government and oil
companies, these hapless consumers have realized that they made a big mistake
by switching over to piped gas.
Why?
Here are some questions and answers:
Q: If there are 300 households in a residential society using LPG Piped
Gas, what are the number of Gas Connections?
A: 300
Q: With a cap of 6 subsidized cylinders per connection per year how many
subsidized cylinders would the society be entitled per year?
A: 300 X 6 = 1800
You may get bewildered and dumbfounded when I tell you that, as per the
government’s bizarre logic, both your answers are wrong.
Here are the “right” answers:
1. The entire housing society comprising 300 households will be treated as One Connection (though basic
commonsense says that each household must be treated as one connection and 300
households rightly add up to 300 connections)
2. This means that only 6 subsidized LPG cylinders will be given to 300
consumers (instead of 1800) in one year.
Isn’t this a preposterous policy which defies logic?
Owing to this ridiculous policy, the monthly piped gas bill is going to
triple (increase by 300%) since a you cannot avail of subsidized cylinders
(yes, your bill will be almost three times your present bill since an
unsubsidized cylinder now costs more that Rs. 900 as compared to the earlier
cost of Rs. 400).
And now that LPG has been de-controlled, Oil Companies will keep raising
the price of LPG frequently and your piped gas bill will soon sky-rocket and
become so expensive that it will become unaffordable.
Thus, sooner of later, you will be forced to discontinue your piped gas
and revert back to your earlier individual LPG cylinder system, because if you
do that, then you will be entitled to six subsidized cylinders every year. As
customers start discontinuing piped gas due to exorbitantly high costs,
supplying piped gas will become financially non-viable and this will lead to
piped gas companies shutting down.
Instead of encouraging the use of Piped Gas which is safer, economical,
logistically efficient and saves precious LPG, it is incomprehensible and
baffling why the government is taking the retrograde step of forcing consumers
to go back to individual cylinders.
Leave aside the efficiency, safety and convenience aspects of piped gas
but just look at the wastage of time, money, effort and fuel involved in
servicing individual LPG cylinders as compared to piped gas.
Instead of the gas truck coming just once a week to replenish the gas
bank, the gas truck will now have to come almost every day to supply individual
refill cylinders to each of the 300 households.
And, going by news reports, in the city of Pune alone, this wastage is going to
replicated in over 350 residential societies which have piped gas systems.
(With each residential society having 200 – 300 households on the
average, just imagine the colossal waste of diesel fuel, increase in pollution
and traffic due to increased vehicular movement of gas trucks, avoidable
increase in consumption of scarce LPG, compromise in safety, inconvenience to
the customer and unnecessary burden of logistic effort to the distributor)
What a colossal waste due to a ludicrous decision by some incompetent
“babu” sitting faraway in Delhi .
Bureaucracies tend to be stubborn and are averse to changing their
decisions, however specious, absurd and illogical those decisions may be.
So you can forget about better sense prevailing on the government and
oil companies.
In the circumstances, what can you do?
Simple.
Just avoid buying a house in a project fitted with a piped gas system.
Why pay extra for something you are never going to use?
Dear Reader: Do you agree? Please comment - I look forward to your views and feedback.
9 comments:
Very informative post regarding property :)
Regards,
Jay
http://road-to-sanitarium.blogspot.in/
As per new rule(rather modification in the rule), each society will get 6 number of cylinders in subsidized rate multiplied by number of apartments in a society.(in short if you have 300 apartments in a society, you will get 300*6=1800 cylinders in subsidized rates per annul). conversely, 300*3 =900 cylinders till Mar'13.
For this each customer/apartment from society has to fill KYC form and society has to produce a declaration to the concerned gas agency.
Aniket Vaidya - Thanks for your useful information
it is nice post . i really like it .
property
The confusion regarding cost and billing is still continuing so now the piped gas dealer is shutting down the connection, so we are left high and dry.
Moral of the Story: Do not go in for piped gas or take a house in a residential complex with piped LPG cooking gas. Have your own LPG connection.
It is more efficient, economical, safe, reliable, logistically convenient, cost-effective method of supplying cooking gas rather than each apartment having individual gas cylinders,it saves precious LPG. Lpg Gas Pipeline Contractor Delhi
True. But then after the cylinder cap, Piped Reticulated LPG Systems have become economically unviable
thanks for sharing this information with us. if we choose the piped cooking gas system then it will cost higher because the builders has to incurred lots of expenses for that. but you can buy houses in those building where there are proper technology installed for rain harvest to save the rain water.
Logical... though use of individual cylinders is cumbersome, the expenses are definately low on cylinder gas as compared to piped. .
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