Here’s a handy tip to tell if a cowboy has ever worked on your gas pipes. Look for miles and miles and miles of yellow tape wrapped around the gas pipes.  For some reason every cowboy or DIY gas fitter seems to think that if they wrap the pipes with yellow electrical tape it somehow becomes safe. WRONG!!! Yellow PVC electrical tape doesn’t fix poor workmanship although it can hide a multitude of errors. Case in point!

We were originally called in to relocate a water and gas pipe inside the house after an extension to the kitchen was added. After arriving on site I  walked into the backyard to locate the gas meter and could smell the gas 15 feet away. As it turned out the culpret was the elbow near the bottom of picture  and was leaking a large amount of gas. WHen I started to look closer however and started to remove the miles of yellow tape I found even more problems. The flexible copper tube shown in the picture is not an “approved fitting” for gas and therefore illegal to use not to mention unsafe.

Once the inappropriate pipe work was cut out, replaced and re-connected we did a tightness test and the leak was gone. We then went inside and did the work we were originaly hired to do.

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