I don't see a problem. If it is disconnected, it is no longer part of the gas circuit. If someone later comes along and randomly connects a gas supply to a shonky old bit of random pipe that happens to be going in the "right general direction", more fool them.
Tim Watts put finger to keyboard:
Yes - that's what I meant when I say "it should be tested", i.e. after reconnection. But I don't know if it's against the regs to leave known bad pipework readily available, as it were.
whisky-dave put finger to keyboard:
Someone competent to work on gas should know that a competent person can do it.
99% of people would pay someone to do the job; it's them the notice is aimed at.They don't want to put "Get someone competent" on the notice, and then Auntie Flo remembers that young Ben got good GSCE grades and asks him round...
ah, ok so the leak is definitely a leak in the fixed pipework then.
Since no drop is permissible on just the pipework alone, that does need fixing.
If you read that as "if you get an installer in to do this, he must be registered..." then its correct. ;-)
(i.e. it glosses over the slim* possibility that the householder may be competent to do the work, but is unregistered)
Well as discussed previously, that is probably the case, but is not always the case - depending on your level of competency. (note that Gas Safe (and CORGI before them) were never shy about over stating their remit!)
Only if selling his services... Obviously if he is competent, and then stops paying his membership fees due to no longer needing to trade, that does not magically mean he has lost all the previous knowledge and skills etc.
A slightly less clear area - so long as not working for reward - it is still ok IMHO.
Of course a gas safe registered fitter should be competent and I would still expect anyone working on my gas system to be registered, but I would still check their work afterwards. ;-)
Regarding those orange flames, they're "living flame" fires that are deliberately run "rich" to give a visible flame. A boiler flame should be blue though.
Tim
It *could* have been an old bit of water pipe. And there's probably plenty of those in houses.
Sometimes you get cases where building work in general causes a gas leak, but there was no actual gas work undertaken. Just disturbance of existing pipework or an appliance can be enough.
A friend of mine moved into a new house once, and after the first year there got the boiler serviced. During the service the fitter noticed that the gas pipe to it had never been soldered at a joint! However it was not leaking do to being a fairly tight joint and there being enough flux on it to keep it gas tight. The implication being that the original fitter many years previous was negligent, but by fluke there was not a bad outcome. You can easily imagine were even decorating near the pipe could have moved it enough to start a leak though.
Indeed - although that storey as a whole does sound a bit suspect to me.
What kind of electrical fault in a cable can you imagine generating enough spot heat in a copper cable to melt a hole in a copper pipe, but not tripping a protective device, or rendering the circuit inoperative, or making lots of smoke etc?
I could just about understand if he created a hard short on a cable strapped against a pipe, it could flash over enough at the time to damage the pipe - but that would have left it leaking at the time.
Also keep in mind where the fitter probably purchases their warning notices from ;-)
I guess.
That's why I "walk" my new pipes and check I did each joint - easy to miss one otherwise.
It would be interesting to see the court transcripts there...
Because it was definitely "for reward" in this case (even if the reward was the mate came and did some quid pro quo work for me later). Also I did not want any doubt lingering in the circumstances since the place was let at the time.
No its not... when you think of the potential destruction that could be caused by trying to remove all unused materials from a building. Sometimes you just have to abandon something. (the more conscientious DIYer however might label the ends of the pipe highlighting its shortcomings).
John Rumm put finger to keyboard:
I'd certainly cut it back, so that a reconnection would require at least one new joint. It might stop an incompetent DIYer from bodging it (FSVO incompetent, of course - some people would probably bridge the gap with a length of garden hose.)
Indeed - and I understand the desire to be cautious, since you don't want to encourage someone truly unskilled and unaware to go of and fiddle with something that may kill them or others.
However it strikes me that simply withholding answers does not really help*. If someone really is too unskilled to realise their level of incompetence, then providing detailed answers to questions may actually draw attention to the fact that the subject is "deeper" then they may have guessed.
As an aside, for anyone attempting to get a handle on the level of knowledge required, reading though some of the British standards docs on the subject is a good start (available online from your library). BS
6891 (pipework), 6798 (Boilers), 6772 (Cookers), 5871 (gas fires / heaters etc), 5440 (flues), ES 751 (sealing materials for threaded joints). I seem to recall you can even track down PDF copies of Tolley's domestic gas installation practice book if you look in the right places (or £65 from Amazon for the legit copy)Well you obviously lived to tell the tale, so it can't have all been bad ;-)
A friend discovered, some years after moving in, that his upstairs lighting was correctly cabled down to the fuse box except for a short length where there wasn't room through a hole for 1.5mm T&E so it had been connected with bell wire and two connectors, still it was only 12" of bell wire!!
Peter
These are deliberately burning inefficiently to generate visible flames, and they will be generating some carbon monoxide. It is therefore very important that the flue is working correctly, to get it out of the house.
They may also generate soot in the chimney.
When we demolished (ha! leant-gently-against...) the summerhouse in our old garden, we found it'd been fully wired up. A nice little ring main of sockets in there. The cable from the house ran inside a hosepipe buried in the poured concrete retaining wall down one side of the garden (steep hill - top of the ~3-4ft wall was next door's ground level.
The cable come into the summerhouse, and into a giant ball of ivy hidden where the interior ply lining met the roof. Prising that apart found that the ring ended in a single round-pin plug. Which was plugged into a socket. Which was attached to a foot or two of the gold-varnished lamp flex. Which ended in a square-pin plug. Which was plugged into one of those cubic multi-way adapters. The pins of which drilled and bolted to the ends of the cable from the house.
Seriously...
The flame when first lit (i.e. before any radiant elements heat up), should be a clean blue flame with no soot). Obviously as they heat the colour changes as the radiant element becomes the dominant black body emitter.
Living flame fires are a somewhat different case - in addition to the radiant elements they are often run slightly under aired to give a more realistic looking flame. They have more flue area to compensate usually, or a catalytic element in the flue to complete the combustion. (many of them are also hideously inefficient).
I know someone who looked at one prospective house, where it had a nice new CU, new cables and new accessories all round. Its only when you looked closely did you notice the "new" cables from the CU dropped down under the floor where they met a sea of junction boxes and were joined to all manner of old cable, including some rubber insulated stuff in very poor condition. It had basically had a "cosmetic" rewire.
Yes, mine is 6kW input, 2kW output, 4kW up the chimney. Haven't seriously used it for ~15 years.
Which is one reason I thought someone trained and/or registared (and some D IYers) would know. I was worried by ther idea that CO could be a problem. since 1997 I've had 3 cats all of them have passed out in front of the fire , the most recent was back in the winter, but each managed to move at just under the speed of light when they heard the fridge door open. Plus Until F eb. I had a CO monitor with digital display set up and that didn;t beep onc e and always showed 00 . I think it should be when it reaches 3ppm or was i t 30ppm. I did notice the gasman meter beeped at 80ppm.
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