T
tonymac
HI guys
first thanks for reading I'm very grateful for any advice I can get on this.
I had a Gazco Studio 1 fitted in my house to replace an older "open" style gas fire about 18 months ago. It was fitted by a long established fireplace business based in Hilington (Glasgow).
On Friday night of last week, I noticed a very faint smell of gas in the room with the fire. I asked my wife if she could smell it and she thought she could but to be fair neither of us was 100% convinced that it definitely was gas.
In any case to be safe I phone the Transco (National Grid?) number and they advised me to swith off the gas at the meter and wait for their engineer.
When the engineer arrived he did a pressure test at the meter, he didn't actually tell me what the results were but he indicated that the pressure test was ok and asked to see the fire.
He then "prodded" the fire with what I assumed to be a gas detector (looked a bit like a car battery, with a long thin black chord coming off from it) and again he indicated that there was no detection of gas. I say "prodded" because since the fire has a glass front then there's actually not many places to stick the detector.
He then asked me to switch the fire on and he repeated the measurements with the detector, this time whenever the chord went all the way over to the bottom right of the fire (ie where the flame was) the reading shot up, glowed red and starting beeping. Whenever he moved the chord more than 12 inches away from the flame (ie over to the left hand side) the reading fell back to normal.
He said that this was indication of a leaking fire. I asked him if this might be "normal" whenever a gas detector goes near a burning flame, but he said that all gas should be burned and the detector shouldn't be able to pick anything up.
On this basis he declared the premises "not safe" and capped my meter.
On the Saturday the fireplace shop sent one of their fire fitters round to have a look, he repeated the pressure tests at the meter several times, this time I was looking over the shoulder
and on each test there was absolutely no drop. The fitter then went to the fire and did a flue test using one of those smoke things and again this showed that the flow up the chimney was fine.
The fitter was confident that there was nothing wrong with the fire and seemed to think that it wasn't unusual for a gas detector to get a reading like that when a fire's burning.
For now I'm not comfortable using the fire (I do have a monoxide detector in the room) nor leaving the gas on over night. I have ordered up a couple of gas detectors, one mains powered one battery powered which I'm going to install in the room.
My question is I don't really know where to go from here. The shop seem to think everything is ok now that their fitter has declared it all safe. Happy to take any advice, I have 3 children under the age of 5 in my house so can't take even the slightest of chances on this kind of thing.
Tony
first thanks for reading I'm very grateful for any advice I can get on this.
I had a Gazco Studio 1 fitted in my house to replace an older "open" style gas fire about 18 months ago. It was fitted by a long established fireplace business based in Hilington (Glasgow).
On Friday night of last week, I noticed a very faint smell of gas in the room with the fire. I asked my wife if she could smell it and she thought she could but to be fair neither of us was 100% convinced that it definitely was gas.
In any case to be safe I phone the Transco (National Grid?) number and they advised me to swith off the gas at the meter and wait for their engineer.
When the engineer arrived he did a pressure test at the meter, he didn't actually tell me what the results were but he indicated that the pressure test was ok and asked to see the fire.
He then "prodded" the fire with what I assumed to be a gas detector (looked a bit like a car battery, with a long thin black chord coming off from it) and again he indicated that there was no detection of gas. I say "prodded" because since the fire has a glass front then there's actually not many places to stick the detector.
He then asked me to switch the fire on and he repeated the measurements with the detector, this time whenever the chord went all the way over to the bottom right of the fire (ie where the flame was) the reading shot up, glowed red and starting beeping. Whenever he moved the chord more than 12 inches away from the flame (ie over to the left hand side) the reading fell back to normal.
He said that this was indication of a leaking fire. I asked him if this might be "normal" whenever a gas detector goes near a burning flame, but he said that all gas should be burned and the detector shouldn't be able to pick anything up.
On this basis he declared the premises "not safe" and capped my meter.
On the Saturday the fireplace shop sent one of their fire fitters round to have a look, he repeated the pressure tests at the meter several times, this time I was looking over the shoulder
and on each test there was absolutely no drop. The fitter then went to the fire and did a flue test using one of those smoke things and again this showed that the flow up the chimney was fine.The fitter was confident that there was nothing wrong with the fire and seemed to think that it wasn't unusual for a gas detector to get a reading like that when a fire's burning.
For now I'm not comfortable using the fire (I do have a monoxide detector in the room) nor leaving the gas on over night. I have ordered up a couple of gas detectors, one mains powered one battery powered which I'm going to install in the room.
My question is I don't really know where to go from here. The shop seem to think everything is ok now that their fitter has declared it all safe. Happy to take any advice, I have 3 children under the age of 5 in my house so can't take even the slightest of chances on this kind of thing.
Tony
