DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD

Bad DIY Gas and Flue

Due to the weather this week and a few cancellations I have decided to jump into the archive of weekly pictures that have not won our coveted Cowboy Of The Week Award and show you this gem.  My joiner rang me late last year and asked if I would look at replacing a wooden fire surround for his client.  I went down to take a look and found this basket mounted in an opening which was built by her ex-husband many years ago. When I tried to inspect the flue I couldn’t see anything but a blackened metal plate sitting directly above the fire basket just behind the lintel. As I fished around I discovered that the metal plate sat upon four hexagon nuts supposedly allowing a draft to pull through but no grit to fall onto the fire basket!

Problem was than the nuts were only about a half in high and themselves were only laying loose on the lintel and surrounding brickwork and the metal plate was laying loose on ths nuts! Nothing was fastened o anything else and certainly the design was nothing that had been tested by anybody competent. I asked where the gas isolator was and was told that it was somewhere under the floorboards. ‘There I think’ as she pointed to the floor!

She had already purchased a huge stone surround that she wanted fitting. She had not bought a basket fire but that is what she wanted installed. She also hadn’t planned on the additional costs of correcting the current problems and thought she could just put the new surround around the existing opening. After explaining the safety issues and also aiding her with options via the company she had purchased the surround from she decided she didn’t want to correct the issues. We disconnected and tagged the fire as unsafe and departed.

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