Hi All
There was a thread somewhere back up there about self-installing a Calor gas hob......
A there's been a very faint smell of gas in our kitchen, on & off, for a few months. The usual 'fairy liquid' testing around the incoming gas pipe, reducers, couplers failed to show anything. The hob was newly fitted when we bought the house - 10 months ago.
So - in desperation, I remake all of the joints using (as recommended by my friendly local "plumbers' suppliers") gas-rated PTFE tape and their patent sealing liquid.....
result......?
.....bother - no improvement......
Finally decided that the (intermittent, very faint) smell was coming not from the _back_ of the appliance where the connections are made, but from the front, where the contols are situated....
So - dismantle the hob (gosh - that sealing compound really sticks the joints up well !) - to discover the most 'Heath-Robinson' arrangement I've ever seen - where the incoming gas pipe seals against the four individual burner taps by means of bent bits of metal and little rubber o-rings - all (sort of) clamped in position and (hopefully) gas-tight.
Here's where the leak was coming from.... not much scope for fixing it...
Phoned the manufacturer (Zanussi). Actually quite helpful.... put me through to 'an engineer', who sounded as if he was sitting in a service van somewhere out in the wilds.
He confirmed that this 'rubber grommert & three Hail Marys' approach is fairly standard, told me that the hob was out of guarantee, the initial callout charge was 70 euro, the replacement parts would have to be ordered and would cost about 50 euro - and that new hobs cost about 200 euro.....
Interestingly, he also said to check the regulator on the gas bottle. This was given to us by the guy we bought the house from about 10 months ago - and (in retrospect) looked a bit second-hand at the time.
Apparently (and this is the purpose of this lengthy post) a frequent cause of failure / leaking on gas hobs is a failed regulator - which is allowing too much gas pressure through from the cylinder. This blows the rubber seals, and you get an intermittent gas leak..
So - we had to go buy a new hob (220 euro) and new regulator (20 euro)
- all because of the old, duff, regulator (free !).......
Lesson learned !
Adrian West Cork, Ireland