From time to time (about once a month at the moment) we find some examples of lethal work carried out by others. Usually this is when we’re quoting for replacements or upgrades, because generally we’re busy enough not to get involved with servicing and repairing stuff we haven’t originally fitted. These two examples were spotted in May 2012.
This is a boiler in a house extension in Croydon, South London, that a builder has ‘moved’ so he can finish a customer’s extension. The builder, a Chinese gentleman who refused to give his name but vehemently assured us and his customer to have electrical and gas qualifications, had carried out the work around a week before we arrived one evening to do a quote for a new combi boiler.
Killer in the kitchen
What is wrong with this? Well, the flue termination on top is designed to be outside.
Our builder expert has moved the boiler on an internal wall, fitted the roof and the windows, doors etc leaving the boiler discharging all the combustion products into the house. Now this is bad enough to result in death of the occupants, but the air supply pipe for the boiler is also inside the room, so that once the boiler has been on for a short while, it will re-breath it’s own combustion products instead of air. This causes a massive concentration of CO products which will kill the occupants in short order. The owners, who had young children, had been experiencing dizzyness and headaches all week. However they said their builder was trustworthy……
The fourth pipe from left is the gas pipe
Just in case he didn’t kill the whole family from carbon monoxide poisoning, the builder joined the gas pipework together with plastic push fit water fittings. These are not allowed to be used on gas, and could have caused a leak, with catastrophic consequences.
Arguably, this bloke should be locked up, but our customer did not want any action taken because they wanted their extension finished. As he had no name and no van we knew if we reported him, he would just ‘disappear’. So we capped the gas at the meter and made safe. I could tell you about his electrical work, but that would be another story.
The next installation I’m going to share with you is one in Oxted, Surrey. We fitted a Viessmann boiler in the house 4 years back, and have subsequently been fortunate enough to fit an external Worcester Bosch oil boiler near Headcorn for the customer’s friend by recommendation.
The house was being rented soon, so at the latest Viessmann boiler service I was asked to have a quick look at the gas fire installed around 2009 by another gas registered contractor, to check that it would pass a Landlord Safety Check.
Lovely looking gas fire, messy tools! Blame me for that.
This looked like a really good installation, but when I stuck my head underneath it seemed the flue aperture was almost completely blocked by brickwork and a steel lintel.
I had to look again as I could not believe what I had seen.
This is looking up the chimney from below. The rectangular metal aperture must be completely open for the fire to work safely.
The opening at the top of the fire should be completely open; this one is almost fully constricted by brickwork and a lintel, in fact the image above does not do it justice. The open black slot you can see (which is all that is left of the opening to the chimney flue) is just the gap between the top of the fire and the blocked top, there is no vertical opening.
This installation was reported to Gas Safe Register; as a result of their investigations the local company responsible who advertise as Gas Fire Specialists have rebuilt the fire surround at their own cost. Unless a prosecution results, we won’t have any more information.
The original bill for this work was circa £3000.00.
We won’t be doing a regular feature like this, but two of these in one week was exceptional!
