Manx Gas completed the Castletown leg of its natural gas conversion project this week (July 16) after converting more than 800 properties in the southern town.

The scheme continues to run to schedule and will soon reach the half way mark, with almost 3000 homes and business in the north and south now safely switched over to natural gas.

“I would like to personally thank all of our customers in Castletown for their kind co-operation over the past few weeks in allowing us access to complete the work,” said conversion project manager Aidan Baglow.

The Manx Gas mobile advice unit was parked at the Southern 100 Paddock for the duration of the month-long stage, with staff on hand twelve hours a day to answer questions and allow people to use its secure key-holder service.

Mr Baglow said: “Our support bus continues to play a key role in meeting the needs of our customers. It lets us engage with them face to face and means we can respond instantly to their needs.”

Ballasalla is the next stop for the project team, where they’ll start work on Thursday morning (July 19). Then at the end of July, they will move on to Colby, Port St Mary, Port Erin, Kirk Michael, Peel, finishing in Ballaugh in December (2012).

“Feedback from our customers continues to be very positive, but there is still lot of work to do and we want to ensure that this experience is shared by those yet to be converted,” said Mr Baglow.

Customers will be notified a month in advance of their conversion date and again a week before. They can find out more information from the dedicated support line on 644445, from www.naturalgasiom.com or from daily updates on the Natural Gas Conversion Facebook page.

“I would like to remind customers that once converted to natural gas, it is still important to have appliances checked each year by a Gas Safe registered engineer to make sure they continue to operate safely and efficiently,” he added.