City apartments now offer piped LPG

City apartments now offer piped LPG
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: In many new apartments coming up in the city, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is now being supplied through pipes connected to a central control.

Residents need no longer fret and fume because they ran out of gas or book for a cylinder and then wait for the delivery boy to show up. All they need to do is turn on a knob in the kitchen and Voila! 24-hour LPG supply.

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) on Thursday inaugurated the `Reticulated/Piped' LPG supply facility installed at Salarpuria Splendor apartments on Airport Road.

``Like water, you get gas when you turn on the pipe,'' said Shanmugham, Territory Manager of BPCL. ``The kitchen is safe and you do not have to worry about strangers coming inside your house to deliver the cylinder,'' he added.

BPCL is tying up with several builders to offer this facility which is already in place in a few city apartments. BPCL has already completed installing such a system for 2,000 flats in Kolkata and will soon begin on a mammoth 5,000 flat undertaking in `Singapore City' at Hyderabad.

The system is rather simple: The apartment building has a cylinder bank where cylinders are fitted to pipelines. BPCL has designed the network and routing to each of the 78 kitchens in the building. ``The kitchen is safe. Normally, the pressure from the cylinder is around 5 kg/cm2, but here it is only 1.01 kg/cm2. There are multi-stage pressure regulators along the pipe,'' Shanmugham said.

At each flat, the gas passes through a meter, much like a water meter, which registers the units consumed. The residents have to pay their bills on a monthly basis.

BPCL has also incorporated several safety features and the supply is controlled by a central knob. The system maintenance is handled by a BPCL distributor.

``We will also conduct training programmes and safety clinics at the time of providing the facility and at regular intervals,'' the official said.