OT: Landlord and gas fires

[John]

Posted this last night in uk.legal.moderated but it must be hung up with a moderator as it hasn't appeared yet. Just wondering what you folks here think of it?

John

When my mam died my wife and I inherited her house, spent £25,000GBP on renovations just two years ago, and now rent it out.

At the time of the renovations, we used a CORGI registered heating engineer, recommended to us by a neighbour (neighbour is a CORGI reg'd engineer too and they used to work together at the same company - the guy he recommended had left to become self-employed about 8 months earlier) and we basically gave him a blank slate to work with.

My mam and dad had had gas fires in both dining room and living room going back about 40-years and I knew that things like the flues, for instance, would not be up to modern regs so I told him to do whatever was necessary to install two new gas fires and a whole complete new central heating system.

CORGI engineers apparently have to go through an annual inspection and his must have been due because he arranged for the CORGI inspector to meet him at our job. The inspector said that everything was OK except that a cowl was needed on top of one of the chimney pots. I got the cowl, our guy fitted it and a few days later CORGI inspector came back and signed off the engineer; the engineer signed off our job and everybody was happy - all hunky-dory, and a superb job done.

12-months ago, we got the same engineer to come back to carry out the Landlord's Gas Safety Certificate checks and tests for us, which he did, and gave us a clean bill of health, everything OK.

A couple of weeks ago the Safety Certificate became due again and, despite plenty of notice we couldn't get the same guy. The tenant said that her boyfriend's brother is a CORGI engineer so we got him to do it - and he condemned the two gas fires as unsafe!

On doing a smoke test he said that the smoke was coming from the brickwork of the chimney instead of the top of the pot and said that flue liners were needed (looking at other chimneys while he was on the roof, all the others in the row of terraced houses already had them), so we told him to go ahead and do what was necessary.

When installing the new flue liners, he discovered that the feathers in the chimney had crumbled, the chimney stack itself was in need of repair and some bricks had fallen into the chimney. When he took the fires out he discovered (in one of the fireplaces, at least) that the "catchment area" (the space at the back of the fire) was not big enough for the kilowatt rating of the fire and, looking up, saw a wooden plank blocking most of the flue. There was also an old builder's metal bucket with a hole in the bottom and this appears to have been the main route for the escape of flue gasses.

The other fireplace used to have a back-boiler and the water pipes came out of the left-hand side of the chimney breast and up the wall in a pipe box. The pipes had been cut off in the catchment area but not sealed, so flue gasses could escape by this route, into the room.

He took some photos of his discoveries to show me but I haven't had chance to see them yet, but I don't suspect that he's having me on. The obvious conclusion of all this is that the guy didn't do the original installation correctly, nor did he carry out the Safety checks last year correctly. The new guy said that the one who did the original job had made a superb job of the central heating - absolutely flawless - but, in his opinion, should not be let anywhere near gas fires. [1]

Our tenant could have died, and that makes us feel physically sick.

We've just paid the bill of £1,375GBP to put it all right (actually, that figure also includes the cost of the Safety Certificate and annual service of the appliances as well - it's not totally down to correcting the problems).

Obvious question is how could this have happened, especially as a CORGI inspector was examining the work of the engineer? What can we do? What should we do?

[1] The original engineer is a very personable bloke; very easy to get on with and the sort of person who, although you've only just met him, you feel like you've been mates for years. Two days before he was due to start our job he was rushed into hospital with appendicitis, which put him (and, of course, us) about 10 weeks behind schedule.

At the end of the job he said that, by way of an apology for the delay and also by way of a thank-you for staying with him and not going elsewhere, he would do the Landlord's Safety Certificates for us, for the first three years, free of charge. Given that, and the fact that at the time we were very impressed with his work, we have subsequently recommended him to many other people - and we are now feeling a bit apprehensive about that.

Thanks,

John

[George]

Get over it and stop worrying.

This new guy seems to go to great levels to do a routine gas fire inspection are you sure he's corgi registered,have you asked to see his card?

Im just wondering wether these pictures he took are from your chimney? ie have you paid the bill for another job elsewhere? :-)

[Lobster]

Yes I know you say you trust the new guy (why?), but it does seem odd that *two* CORGIs had signed off the original installation. And your first CORGI doesn't sound like the sort of bloke who's a cowboy, does he?

And the new CORGI has come via your tenant, which does sound like a potential receipe for setting up a scam. Did you ever look at the actual job before the new guy fixed it? Assuming the new photos are digital it might be interesting to examine them and see if the date they were taken is saved within the file... most cameras do that and most users probably don't know.

I think I might have talked to the original CORGI to see what he had to say before authorising the work to be done. If the job was as bad as reported, then he ought to have sorted it FOC; but I suspect he'd have told you that someone was trying to pull fast one.

David

[John]

You and George may well be right and we may have been taken for gullible fools. We are, after all, only landlords because my mam died and the property is now our "travelling fund" for when we retire in 10 years. We have no experience of this sort of thing and may well be taken for a ride.

However, to try and answer a couple of your points - we'd like to trust the new guy *because* he came via out tenant. The renovations were completed two years ago and she was the first and only tenant (up to now, of course). She pays the rent on the dot each and every month, she likes the house and is looking to stay long-term and she's given us no hassle or problems whatsoever.

Just as importantly, as it's the house I grew up in, I know the neighbours either side and they say she is an ideal neighbour - easy to get on with, no rowdiness, everything clean and tidy. In short, the sort of tenant any landlord would want. She and her boyfriend also play in a band and my wife and I have been to see them a few times and had a few beers with them, so we probably feel safe in saying that yes, we do trust her and by association we trust the new CORGI as he is her boyfriend's brother.

Initially I would have said no, he doesn't. As I said in my original posting, he did such a good job for us that we got him to install a complete new central heating system in our own house and recommended him to lots of other people, and I'm now beginning to hear things from those people that show he's become very unreliable.

About a year ago, a guy I work with had a new boiler (Alpha, with 3-year warranty) fitted by him and it recently broke down. Martin called him only to be told he was too busy, then he could come, then he didn't. After four days of no heating and no hot water, Martin rang Alpha to see where he stood with the warranty if he got someone else to fix it other than the original installer, only to be told that the guy hadn't registered it with them and they knew nothing about it.

10 months ago, our next-door neighbour wanted a quote for a new system. She rang him 6 times and each time they arranged an appointment, he let her down so she ended up going with someone else. 6 months ago, a friend of ours wanted his boiler servicing and basically got the same run-around as our neighbour - so my opinion of the original guy is rapidly falling and now I think the description of cowboy seems more apt.

Oh I'll certainly be doing that.

As I said, we are very naive with regard to this landlording thing and I suppose we just hung on too long for the original guy to do the Landlords Safety Certs for us. Because I'd heard that he was very unreliable these days I started asking him two months in advance, and either spoke or texted him at least once a week to make sure he would get it done on time. He kept saying yes, don't worry, I'll get it done for you - but he never turned up, the safety cert expired and we were running illegaly then, so we just had to get the job done ASAP without the luxury of talking to him first.

John

[geoff]

In message , John writes

Then may I suggest you realise that renting a property is a business, and that you make an effort to peel off all the emotional baggage you have padded your story out with.

You might not be used to doing it, but you need to develop a professional approach.

[John Stumbles]

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The inspector almost certainly wouldn't have had the installer remove the gas fires and show him the flues if the general standard of the jobs

- including the boiler installation - looked as if he knew what he was doing.

As your new engineer said it sounds as if the original bloke shouldn't be let near gas fires, and as you say sounds as if he's losing the plot. You should be telling CORGI all this, and they should be making sure he shapes up or ships out.

[Peter Lynch]

Have you considered the possibility of self-interest? Maybe your tenants fancied some new gas fires. I'd get the installation re-tested if I was you, with an independent engineer. If they pass the installation, maybe mention you have concerns over the fires.

[John]

I wouldn't exactly call it emotional baggage or "padding". Somebody asked why I trusted the new guy and I was just trying to explain why.

Oh, we're well aware of that, just not sure it's possible as we're both they type of people who, if the tenant said they were struggling a bit for money this week, can I pay the rent next week, we would probably say oh, OK then. That's why we rent the property out through a letting agency, so that we don't have to deal with things like that.

About four weeks before the safety cert was due to expire they rang us to remind us about it. I told them that I'd already been in touch with our guy and it was already in hand and would be done shortly. Given our informal arrangement with the original guy that he'd do the safety certs free for the first three years, we just waited for him and waited too long - then panicked when it actually expired and we then became illegal.

If we have been ripped off then we'll just have to put it down to experience and get over it but when I posted here it wasn't exactly for a personal slagging off, or a lesson in how gullible we'd been, but more for opinions on whether we should be reporting the original installer and whether the guy should have fitted flue liners as a matter of course two years ago. The house is a 140-year-old terraced house and the first gas fires were fitted more than 40-years ago, so would (should?) installing flue liners have been part of the job when installing new fires two years ago?

[John]

That's what we've decided to do John, thanks for your input.

John

[John]

Have to confess that I hadn't until people on here pointed out that we may have been ripped off.

Maybe your

The installation will certainly pass now as all the work has been done.

John

[John Stumbles]

To put it in perspective I'm a CORGI reg and if I'd done what your original installer is alleged to have done I'd expect a bollocking for it. OTOH if I knew that I'd checked the flues and they'd been OK and it's a case of (as others have suggested) the new installer in collusion with the tenants wangling for new fires from you then I'd expect the CORGI inspector who investigated to take a realistic view of what's going on and possibly challenge the new installer as to why he hadn't raised a RIDDOR[1] if my installation had been as incompetent as alleged.

[1] Health and Safety dangerous incident report

[david.cawkwell]

My experience of plumbers and corgi registered plumbers is not good. None can even turn up when they say they will. Couldn't even get most of them to come and quote for work. In the end got one to fit a pressurised mains hot water system and recently noticed that one the values is in the wrong place which I have sorted.

I have no time for any of them.

Doesn't surprise me that jobs where missed or not done.

Just had my mums boiler cleaned out and one that just did it (an independent) says he's never seen so much dust in a boiler. So much for the British Gas corgi registed plumbers cleaning it out other years.

Too busy trying to condemn it and get a commission for a new boiler install I suppose.

[Ed Sirett]

For there to be such a discrepancy between the state of the flue between two inspections just 12 months apart, there has got to be something wrong.

If the CORGI inspector had not been involved then I would tend to agree with the idea that the original fitter was cutting corners. However as the inspector was there, then I would have thought that at the very least the inspector would have made the fitter do the basic checks on the gas fires, in situ, which would likely have passed even with many of or all of the faults found later.

Without having seen the state of the original installation it hard to say which fitter has mostly over or under estimated the situation.

There are clearly thing in the second fitters story which smack of over stating the case. Like "the catchment space being dependant on the rating of the appliance". AIUI the catchment space for a Class I chimney used as a flue is 0.012m³ and less for a modern precast block flue, or as the manufacturers require.

I'd reckon as a best guess, unseen, and on the balance of probabilites the story in all fairness is something on these lines:

The first fitter fitted the fires to marginally compliant chimneys. He would not have wanted the inspector anywhere near anything that was going to fail unless it was to show the inspector how good he was at condemning stuff.

The second fitter somewhat exagerated the risks, at least verbally, although the leaking brickwork is serious and he has doubtless made an excellent job of improving the chimneys. Certainly the fact that he is connected with the tenants is a warning, (and similarly just as bad if he had connection to the landlord).

[cynic]

ide quoted text -

The collapsed feather could have been exacerbated by increased use of the fires. Older people seem to be reluctant to use fires frequently and younger tenants may be using them more, drying out the old mortar which crumbled faster until the brickwork of the feather collapsed. Any CORGI inspector would have wanted to see a satisfactory spillage test and in the case of inspections I underwent before retiring because my knees became unwilling to keep kneeling down for a living, the inspector wanted the fire out and verified the catchment space had been cleaned and a smoke bomb put into the fireplace. Same comment applies about the mortar bedding for the chimney pot. Any installer can only work on what is visible and accessible but would carry out flue-flow and spillage tests. Flue linings were not a requirement for an otherwise satsfactorily performing class 1 flue - Ed may be able to say if that has changed?