Gas courses

[sima24]

Hi all, I have been working as a painter & decorator for a building company for the last 5 years or so. Due to having a baby on the way I was looking for a more stable and rewarding career. I have been looking at some sites for gas courses and was just wondering what the proffesionals thought of them.
Some of these sites say you can go from a complete novice to a fully qualified domestic gas installer in 4 - 6 weeks. Qualifictions gained are:
CCN1, CEN1, CPA1, Basic electrics. Would love to hear peoples opinions on these courses and wether its worth spending my money on this??
Im under no illusion that I will be fully competent, i understand to be competent you not only need all qualifications but a wealth of experiance, but is this a good starting point for me?
Thanks for reading.

 

[fuzzy]

Hi all, I have been working as a painter & decorator for a building company for the last 5 years or so. Due to having a baby on the way I was looking for a more stable and rewarding career. I have been looking at some sites for gas courses and was just wondering what the proffesionals thought of them.
Some of these sites say you can go from a complete novice to a fully qualified domestic gas installer in 4 - 6 weeks. Qualifictions gained are:
CCN1, CEN1, CPA1, Basic electrics. Would love to hear peoples opinions on these courses and wether its worth spending my money on this??
Im under no illusion that I will be fully competent, i understand to be competent you not only need all qualifications but a wealth of experiance, but is this a good starting point for me?
Thanks for reading.

How much are they chargiong and how will they get you the experience required to sit the ACS?

 

[andyg0507]

before you can get on these courses you should probably have a look at your local college for some normal plumbing maybe night school, these fast gas courses are a rip off in my opinion, there is no way you could even squeeze all that into 4-6 weeks, and you also have to be working alongside a registerd gas installer.

get in touch with you local college and see what they offer on the normal plumbing side first.

 

[fuzzy]

what makes you think gas fitting is more stable than P&D

 

[newbie1]

Some of these sites say you can go from a complete novice to a fully qualified domestic gas installer in 4 - 6 weeks. Qualifictions gained are:



absolute complete and utter rubish
you will need a good 6 months with a gas engineer building knowledge and a portfolio just to become a novice and will prob poo yourself when called to a job on your own
please do a search about these fast track courses and save yourself the money

 

[wnjswozo]

stick to p/d weathers picking up now ,think of all those outsides that need painting,
i wish all i needed was a few paint brushes,and away,instead of a van full of tools/fittings

 

[oldplumber]

can of paint £25-00, 30m 22mm copper tube £130plus - paint brush £8-00, hilti core drill £500 brush store £45, flue gas analyser £700. why would you want to trade jobs, remember the grass is always greener, heating engineers may have a higher hourly rate than painters but theres a good reason for it. worse thing you can do is ruin a carpet, we can ruin houses/lives and the cost of insurance proves this. have a chat with a friendly rgi before you start parting with your mney and have a look at "where are they now" thread

 

[RoryD]

Hi all, I have been working as a painter & decorator for a building company for the last 5 years or so. Due to having a baby on the way I was looking for a more stable and rewarding career. I have been looking at some sites for gas courses and was just wondering what the proffesionals thought of them.
Some of these sites say you can go from a complete novice to a fully qualified domestic gas installer in 4 - 6 weeks. Qualifictions gained are:
CCN1, CEN1, CPA1, Basic electrics. Would love to hear peoples opinions on these courses and wether its worth spending my money on this??
Im under no illusion that I will be fully competent, i understand to be competent you not only need all qualifications but a wealth of experiance, but is this a good starting point for me?
Thanks for reading.

Think you may have that wrong my friend. NVQ is the standard vehicle from new. It should be around 6 months on block. You would do approx 6 weeks in the college / training centre followed by a few weeks out with your industry (Gas) sponsor... thats right, you'll need one. You will be givin tasks to undertake in the work environment and would be assessed by a D32 assessor. You will also have a number of Projects to undertake. 4 -6 weeks is not what you are looking for my mate. Good luck though.

 

[migoplumber]

any person plumber or otherwise, can go sit their 'acs' and become gas safe registered.
there are many places to do this, just pick up a copy of plumbing heating magazone given away freely at merchants. open the back pages to courses and there will be a course near you - that takes you from nothing to registered in 5 - 10 days. the cost from 700 quid to 1500 quid.
if you allready qualified and resitting then your cat1 student
if your a plumber then your cat2 student
if youve never played before then your cat3

cat1 students, tend to have the training as well as the reassesments just to be sure so are treated as cat2's
cat3 is more complicated and you will have to work to build a portfolio first working for a gsr company.

i like painting.
good luck.

 

[justlead1]

They can help you to pass by giving the answers. But when in at the deep end its another matter. Plus the fact that servicing boilers will bore you to death, stick to the painting, probably more satisfaction than the former. Good Luck

 

[sima24]

thanks for all the replies, very helpful, thanks

 

[fuzzy]

any person plumber or otherwise, can go sit their 'acs' and become gas safe registered.
there are many places to do this, just pick up a copy of plumbing heating magazone given away freely at merchants. open the back pages to courses and there will be a course near you - that takes you from nothing to registered in 5 - 10 days. the cost from 700 quid to 1500 quid.
if you allready qualified and resitting then your cat1 student
if your a plumber then your cat2 student
if youve never played before then your cat3

cat1 students, tend to have the training as well as the reassesments just to be sure so are treated as cat2's
cat3 is more complicated and you will have to work to build a portfolio first working for a gsr company.

i like painting.
good luck.

the ACS is desinged for experienced related tradesmen. Hence as you say somebody without quals or experience will be a cat 3 and require a portfolio of approx 240days experience. Therefore i would argue that somebody picking up a magazine could not simply become ACS qualified in 5-10 days. Even cat 2 requires experince. Cat one is somebody taking it again so would have to be qualified before anyway

 

[msw109]

I concur

 

[kirkgas]

the ACS is desinged for experienced related tradesmen. Hence as you say somebody without quals or experience will be a cat 3 and require a portfolio of approx 240days experience. Therefore i would argue that somebody picking up a magazine could not simply become ACS qualified in 5-10 days. Even cat 2 requires experince. Cat one is somebody taking it again so would have to be qualified before anyway

we run a 26 week full time course, 6 weeks plumbing basic, 8 weeks gas foundation, 10 weeks placement with a gas firm doing install and service/repair, then back to college for 1 week intense refresher training the 1 week for ACS assessments, the quals at the end are NPA in plumbing and ACS CCN1 & 4 appliances, the NPA (National Progression Award is the way to be Cat 2 to do the gas) so it can be done various ways

 

[rob jefkins]

Are you BTSC by any chance?

 

[fuzzy]

we run a 26 week full time course, 6 weeks plumbing basic, 8 weeks gas foundation, 10 weeks placement with a gas firm doing install and service/repair, then back to college for 1 week intense refresher training the 1 week for ACS assessments, the quals at the end are NPA in plumbing and ACS CCN1 & 4 appliances, the NPA (National Progression Award is the way to be Cat 2 to do the gas) so it can be done various ways

Yes there is a gas foundation course, which is available from bpec, i think it is 26 weeks (or days) long, is that the one you run?. That will get you from cat 3 to cat 2. I dont know anyone myself who runs it though.

But remember my point is the ACS is for people who have already been trained and/or had experience, not for new entrants