British Gas: Open Flued Boilers - At Risk

[Terry Fields]

I've just received a gas bill from BG for the last quarter.

In with the bill was a leaflet that looked as if it was selling a CO alarm.

Under the heading "Carbon Monoxide: how you can protect yourself" a number of items were listed. Having got a digital CO monitor, I wasn't much interested in the offer. Nevertheless, I opened the leaflet and glanced at the items in it.

Near the end, one of the items was headed "Open Flued Boiler?"

As I have one of these, this caught my eye, so I read on.

"These appliances take air for combustion from the room they are fitted in. If you own one of these boilers, you should be aware that from 1st June 2008, new ventilation requirements come into force. From that date, any open-flued boiler with less than 90 percent of the required ventilation will be at risk".

It then recommends that BG carry out a Safety and Maintenance Inspection.

At 90 percent of something that it should already have been fitted with, this seems like another BG con to condemn as many open-flued boilers as possible.

For some years now their boiler service has consisted of repeated attempts to find any reason to condemn a perfectly good boiler, the tooth-sucking "Can't get spares for this, mate" being a favourite. This one seems like a new tack on an old theme.

The group might like to be aware of this.

[John]

Thanks - I have an open flued Worcester HiFlow Heatslave in my airing cupboard. For several years it happily passed the tests - then it started to get condemned on the annual service due to lack of ventilation - I fitted some extra ducts to bring air in from the loft - at the last service the BG Guy was questioning whether enough air was getting into the loft.

[Ed Sirett]

The proper info is in BS 5440.

Copies of this are around. The loft is likely to be well enough ventilated it just needs to be certifiably so.

[Andy Dingley]

Friend of mine's place has a BG contract. They've recently tagged the boiler with exactly such. A boiler they've been happily maintaining for some years.

Ventilation into that room is substantial.

[John Stumbles]

It's not a British Gas con, it's a tightening up of industry standards that British Gas installers, like any other gas installers, will have to comply with. In any case the (usually) simple remedy is to improve ventilation to the required standard, if one doesn't want to put a dinosaur out of its misery :-)

Industry standards have changed in the past so that installations that were OK are now condemned: the sorts of open flues that exited horizontally from a wall directly into a terminal, and ones that run on the outside of a wall and terminate beside it, are now out.

[Terry Fields]

Clearly, the solution to the problem of potentially-condemned boilers is to ensure the questions are never asked......and do the servicing oneself.

My annual gas bill is not much over £400 (12000kWh). Paying £kkk to gain a 40% reduction isn't worth it financially, let alone the costs of redecorating, or installing a boiler in the loft (floorboarding, 'safe' loft ladder, rewiring, safety rails) or bathroom (totally redo the bathroom and a probable rewire).

Something's got out of hand...and it isn't my boiler.

[The Medway Handyman]

I got the same flyer. The detector which Gritish Bas are selling for £22.99 is easily available on EBAY for £15.

Sounds like another rip off from our prviously nationalised gas supplier. Cheers Maggie.

[Huge]

Which ripped me off to the tune of several hundred pounds when it was nationalised.

There will be people voting the next General Election who weren't born when Maggie left office. She's gone. Get over it.

[RobertL]

that may be so, but how does air get into the house? In the house I have just moved into there is a boiler in a cupboard upstairs. it draws its air from the cupboard. the doors have big vents in them with grills and 'do not cover' signs. But there seems to be nowhere for the air to enter the house which is fully double glazed.

the simplest solution for me is to cut a hole in the cupboard ceiling and take air from the loft space.

Robert

[Andy Hall]

Fortunately, she was able to leave a legacy of similarly realistically minded people.

[Huge]

Really? Where? The Labour Party is now being exposed as the corrupt, scheming group of scum we always believed, Cameron's a B'liar clone, surrounded by similar and the Liberal Democrats are a sad joke.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Things normal in politics, then.

[Andy Hall]

Well there's me, anyway. That's a start.....

Mmmm..

[Andrew Gabriel]

BG fitted a coal effect fire 20 years ago. They didn't do anything about ventilation, although I deliberately left a large slot through the hearth from the subfloor so it wouldn't draw a draft across the room. Anyway, I just checked the installation instructions and they explicitly say no additional room ventilation is required, subject to satisfactory flue gas spill test. Is that still likely to be acceptable, since 90% of nothing is still nothing?

[Ed Sirett]

There is no change to the first 7kW of heating requiring no purpose provided vents. The flue nevertheless must of course work.

This reminds me of a job the other week where the flue did not work.