Restrictor Elbow. Still required in this day & age?

[DerekG]

What's it for? Traditionally this was a 90 degree elbow in the gas supply to a domestic gas fire containing a screw which could regulate or stop the flow of gas but you needed one or more tools to do this.

As a rule, it and the associated piping was installed about 6" out from the wall and about 6" up from the floor and ran for a couple of feet so was a serious tripping hazard that caused many, many times more deaths from old folks tripping and falling than it saved (if as many as one has been saved), by quenching exploding gas fires.

25 yrs ago I fitted my own gas fire (which had a gas control of it's own) I didn't fit a restrictor elbow. Now the room is to be remodelled and I wonder if I really need to fit one in it's new location, or, as I suspect, do restrictor elbows hark back to the era of soft rubber push on gas pipes (usually well and truly perished) and "gas taps" like the bunsen burners in the labs at school where the price of human life comes cheap. ;-)

AFAICR there wasn't even a master gas control in our "chemi" labs with Ca. 30 bunsen burners, not to mention cylinders of compressed gases and sundry dangerous chemicals (cyanides, sodium, phosphorous etc.).

DerekG

[brass monkey]

H&S insanity, although, most folks I know couldn't knock a nail into a piece of wood.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I think this was mainly because you were trying to supply gas to what was originally intended to be a coal or wood burning fireplace, with solid masonary all around it, including the hearth well out into the room.

I suspect all that's required is a gas c*ck of some type so you can isolate the gas supply to remove the gas fire for servicing.

On mine, one of the hearth tiles lifts out to give access to the gas c*ck and point where you can disconnect the pipe, so you can slide the fire out for servicing the flue. Mine's also 25 years old and originally Eastern Gas fitted it to the restrictor elbow that was already there, but it didn't work as the gas pressure drop was too high (I traced it back and found it was fed from old gas lamp pipework). For other reasons (damp), I had to remove the original earth-standing hearth, build the floor across, and make a new hearth on top of the floor. At that point, I removed the restrictor and put in a new gas supply, with the supply concealed under the new hearth.

I've ocassionally wondered how bunsen burners are connected up nowadays in labs.