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Gas supply reconnection advice.
craig1410 - 2/4/12 at 07:40 PM

Hi,

We've just had our annual gas boiler inspection and as a result of the inspection, our gas supply has been cut off entirely. I'm looking for some advice to try to make sense of what I've been told and to fill in the blanks because it was my wife who dealt with the engineers as I wasn't quite home in time. She was under the impression that it was only the boiler which was being isolated and that gas for cooking and the living room fire would still be available.

Here is the story:

Annual safety check being carried out by Scottish Hydro with an engineer being audited by another engineer.

Discovered a seal missing or defective on the boiler cabinet which meant that a torch shone from the outside could be seen on the inside of the cabinet where it meets the wall. This is the description give to my wife and passed on to me. It has obviously been that way for 10 years and has been inspected twice by Scottish Hydro without anyone noticing. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the fact a defect was spotted.

Told my wife that the boiler must be disconnected and went ahead and carried this out. They ordered the seal which will be here on Wednesday.

After they had left I came home and decided to clean out the fire in the living room ready to get it lit. It is hardly ever used so dust lies in the vent holes and stinks when you first light it. My wife then told me that the gas is off as she discovered shortly after the engineers left when she tried to use the cooker. We are now faced with 2 days of freezing temperature and possibly snow with no heating or hot water.

I phoned Scottish Hydro and the customer services guy then phoned the engineer who said that he was unable to isolate just the boiler so he isolated the whole supply. I said this isn't what was explained etc etc. I said I would be more than happy to just not use the boiler but I wanted to be able to use the living room fire and cooker. The guy mentioned the fact the engineer was being audited and then to my mind dropped a hint that I could turn the gas back on at the stop cock and use the services other than the boiler.

However, when I turned the stop cock valve back on, the large regulator next to the meter gave a bit of a hiss and then went quiet and there is no gas is flowing. I've turned it off again.

Can anyone shed any light on whether the gas might have been isolated in some other way such as via the regulator or meter? Don't worry, I've got no intention of dabbling with regulators or meters, I just want to confirm that there is nothing more I can do before I rattle Hydro's cage again tomorrow. I wondered if perhaps the regulator senses the sudden flow of gas into unpressurised pipework and senses this as a leak or something and shuts fails safe.

Please, no lectures, I just want to understand why turning the gas valve back on didn't have the expected effect, especially as I was lead to believe that this was all that I needed to do (and heed the warning sticker on the boiler obviously). I'm aware of purge and relight procedures but since the gas was only off for about 20 minutes before I got here I didn't think this would be an issue. I've isolated it for longer than that before when going on holiday in the summer.

Thanks,
Craig.

ps. U2U if you prefer.



[Edited on 2/4/2012 by craig1410]

MkIndy7 - 2/4/12 at 07:50 PM

There will be a sealing disc inserted between the flanges on the meter outlet.

From the decription of the fault there its a problem with the room seal of the boiler where there is the potential for flue gasses to escape should anything go slightly wrong.

it does sound like they have been rather over zealous capping off the whole instalation rather than just the boiler, they only usually do this for cases where there is a gas leak on the system and it has failed a tightness test... and on that ground I believe you have a valid reason for complaint to leave somebody without cooking facilities and a secondary form of heating from the fire.

Peteff - 2/4/12 at 07:55 PM

You say it gave a hiss then went quiet as no gas is flowing ? No gas is flowing till you light the fire or turn the cooker on so it will not be doing anything. Ours doesn't hiss even when there is gas going through it.

MkIndy7 - 2/4/12 at 07:59 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Peteff
You say it gave a hiss then went quiet as no gas is flowing ? No gas is flowing till you light the fire or turn the cooker on so it will not be doing anything. Ours doesn't hiss even when there is gas going through it.


The little hiss will have been the regulator re-filling the meter and opto the cap... which means they didn't check that the cap they'd put in or the meter connections were sound after they'd re-mounted it which is a bit of a whoopsie they always seem to do after they've just been playing god!

craig1410 - 2/4/12 at 08:00 PM

Hi, yeah I just read about sealing discs so that would make sense.

As you say, it seems pretty unreasonable to cap off the whole system but the guy was being audited so I guess he didn't have much choice. It was a 6pm appointment and dismantling the boiler probably wasn't how he wanted to spend his evening either.

I'll get my wife to phone them in the morning and see if they will reconnect the supply and isolate the boiler in some other way, perhaps electrically assuming that they are unable to take my word for it when I tell them I won't use it until Wednesday. I mean, if I wanted to I could remove the sealing disc and use it anyway but have no interest in doing so. I just want to be able to boil water on the hob for washing purposes and heat the house from the secondary fire. We've got a small electric fan heater which I use in the garage but they are a bit dangerous to have sitting around the house in my opinion. We can also heat water using the kettle but it's a bit slow. Both kettle and electric heating are costly too.

Anyway, thanks for posting.
Craig.

craig1410 - 2/4/12 at 08:01 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Peteff
You say it gave a hiss then went quiet as no gas is flowing ? No gas is flowing till you light the fire or turn the cooker on so it will not be doing anything. Ours doesn't hiss even when there is gas going through it.


Hi Pete,

Yeah I turned it on then went inside and tried to light the cooker hob but there was no gas flow so I went back outside and turned it off. I tried it again a bit later after my dinner but this time there was no hiss and still no flow. Sounds like a sealing disc right enough.

Thanks though,
Craig.

MkIndy7 - 2/4/12 at 08:04 PM

There should be a way of disconecting the boiler only, either externally where the gas pipe connects onto the mounting frame or on the inlet to the gas valve itself.

If he was being audited then he's probably gone for the absoloutely safest way.
If i've not had a suitable cap before i've closed the gas valve and removed the lever so it can only be opened with a tool and removed part of the wireing harness aswell. Maybe not absoloutely to the letter but somebody would have to very intentionally undo what you've done and thats proably harder than simply undoing the cap if one had been fitted anyway!.

craig1410 - 2/4/12 at 08:33 PM

quote:
Originally posted by MkIndy7
There should be a way of disconecting the boiler only, either externally where the gas pipe connects onto the mounting frame or on the inlet to the gas valve itself.

If he was being audited then he's probably gone for the absoloutely safest way.
If i've not had a suitable cap before i've closed the gas valve and removed the lever so it can only be opened with a tool and removed part of the wireing harness aswell. Maybe not absoloutely to the letter but somebody would have to very intentionally undo what you've done and thats proably harder than simply undoing the cap if one had been fitted anyway!.


Yeah that's what I was thinking. It's one of those situations where potentially following the procedure to the letter doesn't take account of what is actually safest. Is it safer to leave the boiler on for an extra couple of days when it has already been this way for 12 years or is it safer to inform the householder that the boiler is defective and leave it and the other appliances connected or is it safer to do what he has done. In this case the safest would have been to leave it alone or simply advise against using the boiler because that way you don't have an amateur like me looking at ways to circumvent the safety and potentially being tempted to remove the disc and leave a leak! Due to the nature of the defect, the risk is only present when the boiler is active so recommending keeping the boiler off should be sufficient or "use it at your own risk - sign here to acknowledge".

Anyway, I'll leave it be until tomorrow at least then I can go off to work and stay warm leaving wife and kids (on holiday) to decide how cold they want to get before calling the gas company...

Thanks again.

JoelP - 2/4/12 at 08:53 PM

I think its outrageous that they can turn the lot off and not leave any alternate heating. Fan heaters are no good for leaving on all night. I'd be complaining in a very determined fashion tomorrow, laying it on thick about the coming snow.

If it was my house, id have it back on by now

Do you have a CO alarm in vicinity of the boiler?

craig1410 - 2/4/12 at 09:05 PM

quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
I think its outrageous that they can turn the lot off and not leave any alternate heating. Fan heaters are no good for leaving on all night. I'd be complaining in a very determined fashion tomorrow, laying it on thick about the coming snow.

If it was my house, id have it back on by now

Do you have a CO alarm in vicinity of the boiler?


They did offer fan heaters but at that point my wife thought that we still had the gas fire in the living room and the cooker working so declined. As you say, they can't be left on at night and they are also costly to run. When I spoke to the guy in CS I thought at that point that I could just turn it back on but when I tried I found that it had been capped. I could indeed turn it back on again and probably would do if I was going to be at home tomorrow but it's a different story when I am leaving at 8am and not back until 7pm with only wife and kids in the house. I don't want to risk anything when I'm not there to take care of it. It also won't be me here on Wednesday to explain how the engineer's sealing disc accidentally fell out...

Of course just to put the tin hat on a crap day, my wife isn't speaking to me now because she has perceived that I am blaming her for this situation when all I asked was "why didn't you try the hob or fire before they left?" I should have known better than to ask a perfectly reasonable question... I suspect the house will be warm long before her icy looks thaw out...

ReMan - 2/4/12 at 10:20 PM

I'm in the outrageuos camp too. Sounds like a quick exit of last call of the day

Whilst I wont disagree that safety should come first, would they have left things like this if your familiy was an elderly person on the edge of hypothermia
Imagine that on their headlines!
Fan heaters or not