Anyone else seen the Gritish Bas advert with the poncy ecobollox title "Look After Your World with British Gas"?
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"A whimsical animation shows individual little green planets floating in space with a house on each, as the narrator advises that British Gas is doing its bit by building the world's largest wind farm, which is illustrated by a British Gas van towing a blue planet festooned with wind turbines. He continues that this helps provide us with renewable and affordable energy, as the gas man leaps onto one of the green planets and plugs his blue planet in."
Point is, the Gritish Bas bloke uses a presumably 'live' 13 amp plugtop to connect into a socket outlet - clearly a very dangerous thing to do. Imagine if a small child on one of those little green planets unplugged it & touched the live pin?
I may grass them up to the ASA if I get bored/annoyed enough.
Oh go on then. I'll join you! Lets see if we can take down Gritish Bas. It would serve the b*stards right, promoting a green image whilst condemming perfectly serviceable boilers & over charging for vents.
My 86 yo mother has a Baxi back boiler in her living room, behind a gas fire. She has both serviced by BG every year on contract, and neither has ever given her any problem, or any cause for concern. Every year they try to sell her a new system for a couple of grand, by telling her that they might not be able to get parts soon. The room is supplied with fresh air via a sliding vent above her patio doors. It is always left open, as some years back on one of these service visits, a screw was put in to make sure that it can't be closed. This year, they told her that this no longer "conforms to regerlashuns, luv!" so arranged for someone to come along and put in the new 'approved' vent at floor level - mercifully for no charge.
It was duly done, and then inspected by some other officious erk, who said it had been fixed wrongly or something, so sent the original crew back to finish the job properly.
We went to see her a couple of weks later, and her living room was like an ice box, despite her having her gas fire, which is the only heating in that particular room, on full. We eventually tracked the reason down to the new vent, which is out of sight, out of mind, behind a chair. It is such a bloody great thing hacked through the wall, that gale-force winds of outside freezing air now whistle through it straight into the room. So much for saving the planet. She's a feisty old bird, and said that she was having none of it, and promptly fetched a surplus cushion, which she jammed between the vent and the back of the chair that's in front of it ! It's her contention that if it has worked perfectly well for the last 20 odd years, there's no reason it should be any different now, and if it is, well then, san fairy ann.
So what has changed ? Why all the waste of effort to change something that has always been adequate, and was presumably specced to supply the required air back when the house was designed and built, and architects still knew what they were doing ?
We have decided to pass your complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority Council for their consideration. I will write again with more information following the outcome of their discussions in due course.
The industry assessment of undersized ventilation. Until about the middle of last year anything over about half the correct ventilation was OK (technically "Not to Current Standards") provided the appliance seemed to be working OK. Now it's got to be spot on (less a few percent allowance for margin of error). It's not Brutish Gas' decree but the industry generally, in response (apparently) to an increase in Carbon Monoxide incidents due to undersized ventilation. (I would guess this may be connected with more people putting in uPVC windows and laminate flooring which cut out much of the 'adventitious' ventilation one got from draughty wooden windows and floors.)
Because it wasn't specced to supply the required air back when the house was designed and built because the architects still didn't know what they were doing ?
Is this actually true? Despite the widespread availability and, I assume, use of CO alarms?
Hmmmm....
A review of carbon monoxide incident information, for 2005/06, produced from the full investigation of incidents which had resulted from the use of piped natural gas and LPG, within Great Britain
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report has been written by Advantica as a continuation of the work established during the Joint Industry Programme (JIP), Addressing Carbon Monoxide (CO) Issues, within the Incident Data project area. It covers the period 2005/06. The aim of this work is to identify common causes of CO incidents related to appliance and system design, installation and maintenance.
This information can then be used to further improve customer safety, to target expenditure on CO incident prevention and to identify further research work. As part of the JIP project, a national data collection scheme for CO incidents, arising from the use of piped natural gas and LPG which occur within Great Britain, was established by Advantica. This was with the support of the HSE and the gas industry. This report provides information collected via the national data collection scheme and analysed by Advantica.
This is the tenth report of a series that commenced with the publication of its first report for incidents that occurred in 1996/97, and it covers the financial reporting period 2005/06. The incidents are only described by postcode to ensure anonymity. For the period covered, details of 15 domestic piped natural gas incidents were submitted to Advantica, and analysis of this data constitutes the main part of the report. Details of an LPG incident are included in an appendix of the report.
The results of the 15 natural gas incidents in the main part of the report are summarised below:
The number of domestic related CO poisoning deaths reported, at 7 during
2005/06, was the same as last year and equals the lowest recorded since the DIDR system was introduced in 1996/97.
The over-all FPPY figure of 0.15 x 10-6 is within, what would normally be considered as, the ?broadly accepted region? of HSE?s criteria for the tolerability of risk. However societal concerns over gas safety override averaged numerical considerations. This also equals the lowest value recorded since the introduction of the DIDR system.
In variation with previous years, nearly 2/3rd of the incidents included in this report occurred in owner occupied properties. During 2004/05 the proportion of incidents between owner occupied and tenanted properties was almost evenly split.
In contrast with earlier years, terraced properties had a lower propensity for incidents than other property styles.
The most common room location for casualties was the living room/lounge followed by the bedroom. Unusually, in 2005/06, more than 50% of incident appliances were installed in compartments.
The majority of CO incidents involved appliances fitted with open, individual, natural draught flues.
Central heating appliances were responsible for the majority of fatal and non-fatal casualties.
The most common incident cause was an appliance fault, the next in order was a lack of servicing.
Flue and ventilation faults were concurrent in many domestic incidents.
There was 1 LPG incident reported during 2005/06 giving rise to a single fatality.
Is the problem that the rules are evolving to assume the house is sealed and only explicit ventilation is relevant? Is there no correction for eg a draughty house, where the ventilation could well be more than adequate? Can the rules be based on measurements of air flow rather than just sizes of holes?
Don't be silly. You fast forward through them ... or haven't you discovered the joys of watching programs on commercial channels 30 minutes after the start via a hard disk recorder.
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