Gas and Oil Safety

From BBC News

Some 250,000 gas appliances in Britain and the Isle
of Man are installed or serviced by illegal fitters each year,
according to a watchdog.
Over the last nine months, 12% of
gas installations that were investigated were classed as "immediately
dangerous", the Gas Safe Register said. Fourteen people have died and 234 have required hospital treatment in the last year due to carbon monoxide poisoning. It has prompted a campaign to alert householders of the dangers.

Safety scheme
By law, only registered engineers should carry out gas work in people's properties. This register is overseen by the Gas Safe Register, a safety body that replaced Corgi in April 2009. The
group estimated that at least 7,500 illegal gas fitters are at work
without the skills, qualifications or registration to do the job. It
said that almost as many gas hobs and ovens were installed by
unregistered gas fitters as registered ones. Of the installations discovered to be dangerous, 39% were leaking gas, and 45% had flueing or combustion faults.


The Register wants householders to ensure that they use registered
workers, and to request a free inspection if they were suspicious of
recent work.

Tragedy
Those who died as a result of
poorly-installed gas appliances included Margaret Eileen Powell, 72,
and Thomas Gwyn Morgan, 74, who were found slumped on the sofa at Mrs
Powell's home in Brecon, Powys, in December 2006. Peter Tongue,
60, of Llanspyddid, near Brecon, Powys, was jailed for three years in
July after being convicted of their manslaughter at Cardiff Crown
Court. Self-employed gas engineer Tongue had called to service
Mrs Powell's gas boiler 12 days before and had inadvertently left it in
a lethal condition. Despite being a Corgi-accredited engineer, Tongue's registration for that type of boiler had lapsed three years before.

In the Channel Islands, many heating systems are oil-fired. The registration body for oil is OFTEC. Make sure that anyone working on your boiler is either CORGI or OFTEC qualified and registered. Any legal engineer or technician will be proud to show you his registration card.

Any new boiler installations must be approved by Building Control and a compliance certificate issued. If the installer is CORGI or OFTEC registered, they are able to self-certify and the registration body will send you c certificate to prove that the installation is legally registered. Without the correct paperwork, your buildings insurance may be invalidated.

Sound advice. Don't know about the CI but if you are in a rented property in the UK it is a legal obligation for the property owner to have an annual gas appliance inspection carried out (by a certified engineer, naturally). If this is not compulsory in the islands, it should be. If it is, does everyone comply?

It is compulsory, and a Landlord Certificate should be displayed, but many do not bother.

An annual inspection for oil is not legally compulsory but every insurance policy that I have seen demands an annual certificate (CD12)

LINKEY

so was the gas engineer who disconnected the elderly couples gas cooker recently, in the right ?
why did it make the front page of the press ?
would a cowboy gas engineer leave them with a fire hazard ?

so why was the gas company / engineer slated for acting within the corgi regulations ?

Tuesday next week, I have my biannual gas fitter audit.

2 random jobs I have done and supplied permits for are comprehensivly tested for compliance.

Should anything be found amiss I have to put it right at my own expense within 10 days.
I then pay a reaudit fee of $135.

I then sit down with the auditor for 2 hours with a random checksheet of questions from the Gas Regs.
I have to prove that if I don't know the answers, I have to be able to find them in the regs.

Should I not be able to do this, I will again have a retest in 10 days.

Spirit will understand this bit............

I have to possess an electronic manometer, which cost me $600 and it has to be calibrated every 2 years, ($150) they will no longer accept the old glass U tube.
I also should have CO monitoring equipment at a cost of $2500, but for the amount of work I do I am allowed to hire it.

Each year Gas fitters have to earn 16 points, earned by upskilling courses, or their licence will not be renewed.
A full day course, run by varying companies will earn you 8 points.
A full 2 day first aid course will earn you 8 points, but this can only be used once in every 4 years.

My annual Gasfitting licence costs me $200

My annual Plumbing licence costs me an extra $200

Anyone doing unpermitted Gas fitting is liable to a fine of up to $100,000, depending on circumstances.

Yet, people still die here from Gas fitting work carried out illegally, admittedly not very often.

When they introduced all this regulationary stuff, some years back, we all thought it was draconian and repressive.

Then I had to repipe a state house where the entire family had died in a fire caused by a faultily installed gas fire.

Father, mother and 4 young kids.

Draw your own conclusions !!

The Gimp wrote:so was the gas engineer who disconnected the elderly couples gas cooker recently, in the right ?
why did it make the front page of the press ?
would a cowboy gas engineer leave them with a fire hazard ?

so why was the gas company / engineer slated for acting within the corgi regulations ?

Appears to be another Press sensationalist story.

The gas fitter was correct but would be unlikely to disconnect the supply without an underlying situation. Under normal circumstances, the worst I would expect is that the fitter would have disconnected the cooker bayonet and put on a warning sticker. As the regulation breach was one of perceived fire safety and not gas safety, I suspect that there was more than the complainants have stated.

It was so late after the 'event' that my cynical self thought it might just be to bring attention to the fact that he is an author and had just released a book - because if it wasn't for that article I would never have known that!!!!! Also if they are playing on the 'elderly' bit in their 60/70's then we are all getting older sooner!!!! (or was that the GP's spin on it???)