How to turn off the gas in an apartment: procedure for refusing gas supply

Do you have a gas stove installed in your kitchen or have you moved into a new building and are just waiting for it to be connected? Agree, fumes and a lack of oxygen in the kitchen are not the best aspects of using it, and an open fire creates a danger, especially if there are children in the house.

When buying an apartment, you get a ready-made solution - either a gas or an electric stove, and it seems that this cannot be changed. But this is not so, it is quite possible to abandon gasification, and we will help you with this.

In this article, we will look at the reasons for refusing gas supply, how to turn off the gas in an apartment, what documents and authorities need to be involved, whether it is worth doing, and also how to switch from a gas stove to an electric one.

How to give up gas?

Paragraph 51 RF PP dated July 21, 2008 No. 549 “On the procedure for supplying gas to meet the household needs of citizens” guarantees everyone the opportunity to refuse gas supply services, subject to repayment of debts.

But for the legality of such actions, it is necessary to coordinate them not only with gas workers, but also with all related authorities.

Gas stoves appeared in almost every home not so long ago, no more than 100 years ago, instead of stoves

If, after weighing all the pros and cons, you decide to abandon gasification, below is the procedure for voluntarily turning off the gas in the apartment. Let’s say right away that you will have to run around with documents a lot, and even more problems may arise when registering an electric stove.Therefore, be sure to read the article to the end before starting the procedure.

Step 1 - creation and approval of the project

In order to do everything legally and subsequently not have problems with gas workers and other organizations, you should start by collecting and preparing documents. First of all, contact the technical inventory bureau and order a registration certificate for your apartment if you don’t have it on hand (you might have left it after the purchase).

It will indicate all communications and equipment, including a gas stove and, if available, a water heater. This procedure is quick and usually free, but it's just the beginning.

To make changes to the layout and equipment of the apartment, including giving up gas, you must draw up a project - an exact plan diagram of what you want to get as a result.

This project will be reviewed by different organizations and they will give an answer as to whether it is possible to convert the apartment in this way specifically in your case.

If, in addition to abandoning gasification, you plan to demolish or move a wall, move a sink, or even just remove the door to the kitchen, display all these changes in the project at once, otherwise you will have to go through the whole procedure again.

The apartment project is drawn up on a certain scale, indicating literally every little detail, from the thickness of the walls and the presence of doors to the installation point of the gas stove

For each typical high-rise building, there are standard redevelopment projects developed by engineers during its construction. If the standard options do not suit you, you will need to develop and approve an individual project.

With certain drawing skills and minor changes, you can make a sketch yourself, but there is a chance that it will not be accepted due to the incorrect scale or subtleties of design. Therefore, it is better to order a project from a specialized organization, an engineering and design bureau included in the SRO.

Before developing a project, an inspection of the apartment and its technical condition will be required, and the finished document must be approved by Rospotrebnadzor.

Step 2 - permission for redevelopment

Before calling the gas workers and welding the pipe, you need to coordinate this with the management company, housing office or other local government body to which your house is attached. The list of changes requiring approval, as well as the procedure for registering reconstruction or redevelopment are prescribed in Chapter 4 of the Housing Code of the Russian Federation, published on December 29, 2004.

You can submit an application for registration of reorganization both at the local administration and at the “One Window” multifunctional centers or on the government services website. In any case, it is free, you only need to pay for the services of the company that developed the project.

Giving up gas and replacing the stove with an electric one is included in the list of conversions, and therefore you need to go through the entire procedure

To complete the redevelopment, you need to submit the following documents:

1. Fill out an application for reconstruction/redevelopment - the form will be issued on the spot.
2. Registration certificate for the apartment, which you took from the BTI.
3. A project completed and agreed upon with Rospotrebnadzor.
4. Your passport.
5. A document confirming that the apartment belongs to you.
6. If you are not the only owner of the property, you will need written consent from all co-owners.
7. If your house is an architectural, historical, or cultural monument, you will need permission from the authority for their protection.

Now they are actively developing the Unified State Register of Real Estate - an electronic database of all information about the entire housing stock of the country. If you have recently purchased housing and are sure that you are registered in this system, be sure to submit only an application and present your passport, and all other documents are optional; the commission will request the missing ones independently.

In a maximum of 1.5 months, the commission must decide on a decision on your issue, and after another three weekdays - send or issue you a decision on allowing or prohibiting reconstruction.

Step 3 - dismantling gas pipes

Only after the project has been approved can we begin the practical part of the project - getting rid of the slab and excess pipes. At this stage, you will have to resort to the services of gas service workers.

After all, any unauthorized intervention in the gas supply system, even after approval of the project, is illegal and punishable by fines.

Even unscrew the hose from the stove When the tap is closed, only a certified gas worker has the right, because this is dangerous work. Any mistake can endanger not only your apartment, but the entire house.

Only certified professionals with special permission have the right to turn off the gas stove and weld the pipe or install a plug on it

To have the gas turned off, contact the gas service with an application and an approved reconstruction project, as well as a passport and a copy of documents confirming ownership. The application is signed by the chief engineer and, most likely, you will be put in a queue, because there are many subscribers, but there are often not enough gas workers - sometimes you have to wait more than a month.

On the appointed day, the craftsmen will come to you and turn off the gas as specified in the project. Remember that everything must be completed within a year from the date of issuance of the project.

If there is a riser running through your kitchen, they will probably leave it, cut off only the branch and place it on its stump stub. They can also save the meter and put a plug after it - then it will be easier to restore gas supply if necessary. In any case, the remainder of the pipe should be inspected annually by a certified gas fitter for leaks.

Sometimes in the layout of a high-rise building, the kitchens of neighboring apartments have a common wall, and one common riser is laid, from which a branch goes to the neighbors through a partition. If this is your case, there is a chance to get rid of the gas completely: by agreement with your neighbors, your cuttings will be cut off and brewed right next to the riser, still on their territory.

Welding can damage wallpaper, furniture nearby or suspended ceilings - take care to protect them with a sheet of metal, or at least a piece of old linoleum

At the end of the work, if a plug is installed in a tap on a thread, it is sealed, and you are given a disconnection certificate. The act must be accompanied by copies of the license and permits to carry out work on the gas pipeline. You can read more about how to cut off a gas pipe in an apartment in this material.

Step 4 - approval of the completed redevelopment

After all the work has been completed, it is necessary to complete the paperwork: notify a number of authorities about the reconstruction and make changes to the technical passport of the premises.

First of all, a specialist from the acceptance committee from the local government agency where you approved the project should come to you.He will check whether the changes made correspond to those planned, and, if everything is correct, he will issue a report. It will be sent to the property rights registration authority.

In addition, you need to go to the gas service again with a certificate of completed work and terminate the contract for the provision of services so that you no longer receive receipts for gas. It happens that receipts will continue to be sent even after disconnection - in this case, submit and register a written complaint against gas service. If this does not help, they will not consider it or refuse to satisfy it, file a lawsuit.

Also, after making all the changes, you need to record them in the technical passport or apartment plan in the BTI. To do this, a specialist is also called to the house, who assesses the current condition of the apartment: is there a stove, gas pipes, or have other changes been made. Based on its measurements and inspection, an acceptance certificate will be issued.

After refurbishment or redevelopment of an apartment, its registration certificate no longer corresponds to reality - it must be reissued by contacting the BTI again

A new registration certificate for the apartment, without indicating the gas stove in the kitchen, can be obtained from the BTI by attaching to the application the acceptance certificate, the old registration certificate, permission for reconstruction and the passports of all co-owners of the apartment.

Of all these stages, you need to pay for the approval of the project and for the issuance of a new registration certificate for the apartment, as well as directly for the work of the gas workers in dismantling the pipes and for the development of the project by a specialized bureau. Submission of all applications to any authorities is free, they can be submitted through multifunctional centers or online.

Electric stove design

If you give up a gas stove, you will probably replace it with an electric one, because you need something to cook on.The easiest option is to purchase a small 1-2 burner tabletop glass-ceramic, or even better, an induction cooker.

They have a relatively low power, 2 - 5 kW, and can be plugged into a standard single-phase outlet. As for a boiler or washing machine, for an electric stove it is recommended to run a separate cable from the meter, install a circuit breaker on it and be sure to ground the outlet. But such plates do not greatly increase the overall load on the wiring, and you can install them yourself, without permission or registration from the regional government.

When wiring a new wire, consider the power of the equipment: a copper core with a cross-section of 2.5 is rated for a maximum of 6 kW, and a 16-amp outlet is rated for 3.5 kW

If you have a large family or just like to cook, and 1 - 2 burners are not enough for you, you need to install a 3rd machine in the panel and run a new thick cable from it to install a special sockets for electric stove.

On average, a freestanding electric stove with oven consumes at least 4-8 kW of energy per hour if all burners and the oven are turned on, and models with metal burners are even more powerful. This is a serious load on the wiring, exceeding the average normal load for the entire apartment - even with a refrigerator, boiler, microwave, TV, computer and other appliances operating simultaneously.

To protect both you and your neighbors, electricians check for additional powerful wires connected to the distribution panel and can cut off any extra wires installed without permission.

To prevent this from happening, you need to connect a powerful electric stove only with the permission of the energy supply organization, officially registering its installation.In addition to legality and safety, this route gives you a chance to get a 30% discount on electricity tariffs. We’ll tell you why only a chance and how to get a discount a little further.

Exceeding the power for which the wiring is designed leads to regular tripping of the fuse or to overheating of the wires with their melting and the risk of fire

First, let’s look at how to formalize the transition to an electric stove:

1. Find out if such a connection is possible for your apartment. To do this, at a meeting of residents, at least 67% must vote in favor of allowing you to consume more electricity, increasing the load on the common house wiring.
2. Having received the approval of your neighbors, you contact the management company or housing office with a request to increase the power allocated to the apartment. There you will be given technical specifications indicating how much power the current communal and apartment wiring can withstand.
3. With this information, you contact the city electrical networks with a corresponding application, or it is submitted directly by your management company. If connection is possible, they draw up the project and permit. Until this moment, we strongly advise against even starting the procedure of disconnecting from the gas.
4. In parallel with the dismantling of the gas pipe, electricians will lay a new cable, install a three-phase socket or connect an electric hob, and issue a certificate of technological connection.
5. Coordinate the installation with Rostekhnadzor, approve the project and replace the technical passport according to the same scheme as described above.
6. Contact your electricity supplier to renew the contract and provide a new tariff, as for an electric stove user - it is 30% less.

Without such registration, you cannot claim a tariff reduction.

Which wiring or socket to connect the stove to is required to be indicated in its passport. General rule: do not change the original plug

Only after such a procedure can you safely use a full-fledged electric stove at full power, and not turn off all other electrical equipment in the apartment.

Problems when switching from a gas stove to an electric one usually arise at one of 2 stages: there is not enough power in the general house wiring, and therefore the management company refuses to connect the electric stove, or after installing it, the energy supplier refuses to change the tariff. Both problems are objective and refusals are justified, but you should not always give up when faced with one of them.

The tariff change is provided for by the Pricing Principles in the field of regulated prices (tariffs) in the electric power industry, RF PP No. 1178 dated December 29, 2011 Clause 71 provides for reduction factors from 0.7 to 1 for city residents using electric stoves.

The government decree talks about reducing electricity tariffs for houses equipped with electric stoves. The decision on the application of these coefficients is made by the local executive authority

However, there is a Procedure for establishing and applying social norms for the consumption of electrical energy (power), RF PP No. 614 dated July 22, 2013 year, which specifically states that “if the level of improvement of an apartment building or residential building provides for the provision of utility services for gas supply,” then the installation of an electric stove will not become the basis for a tariff reduction.

It is on this basis that electricity suppliers most often and most convincingly refuse to change the tariff.

But even this point can be interpreted in two ways, because after giving up gas in your apartment, the gas pipeline is welded shut or completely removed, so there is no gas supply for you, and this point applies only to those who install an electric stove in addition to a gas one. In this case, it is possible to achieve a tariff change through the courts; successful examples exist, but they are rare.

Once you've made the decision to switch to an electric stove instead of a gas one, you're sure to find a way to do it that's right for you.

Lack of power is a fairly common problem, especially in older houses. You can get the regional power company to update the wiring in the entrance with an increase in its capacity together with the management company, and if they are not ready to cooperate, through the court. However, this will require a huge investment of time, energy and money for lawyers.

There are examples of success of residents in such a struggle, but they are rare, because as a result, the reconstruction of the wiring in the house is carried out at the expense of the city budget, free of charge for residents, and this is about 1.5 million rubles. Therefore, do not rush to give up gas until you are sure that you can connect an electric stove.

If you are faced with similar problems and are not ready to fight, think about whether it might be easier to install an electric stove without giving up a gas one? There are combined hobs with different types of burners. Or turn off the gas and use a low-power 1-2 burner electric stove, without turning it on at the same time as the boiler, iron or oven.

Conclusions and useful video on the topic

We talked about the reasons and procedure for turning off the gas in a separate apartment, as well as switching to an electric stove. To visually evaluate the process and result, we offer you a video.

Trimming a gas pipe in the kitchen is as follows:

From all of the above, we can conclude that abandoning gasification is not a difficult matter, but it is quite lengthy and fussy. You will have to go through a lot of authorities and complete a whole series of documentation in order to do everything legally. However, now everything is noticeably simplified by multifunctional centers that accept documents for various services, as well as the ability to submit many applications online.

Have you refused gas in your apartment? How did the procedure go in your case, how much time and money did you spend? Perhaps you have something to add or clarify our information - leave your comments and ask questions in the discussion below.