DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD

Bad Carpet Fitters

I was getting to think that nothing much surprises me anymore when it comes to illegal, unsafe and dangerous situations that we uncover on a daily basis. I thought I had seen it all until earlier this week. So when I was called in to service some gas fires at a small accountancy firm I was surprised to find the gas fire shown below in the state it was in. I am used to unqualified builders and kitchen fitters creating unsafe situations but a carpet fitter! This carpet fitter should really stick to carpet fitting. No REALLY mate! Stop screwing with things you don’t understand!

When we perform safety checks on a wall mounted gas fire we have to turn off the gas supply and remove the fire from the wall to inspect the area behind the closure plate. We perform a flue flow test to make sure the flue is working and not leaking into other parts of the building and we physically get a look up into the flue. We look for things like loose brickwork that may have fallen down, birds which may have fallen in, old flue damper plates which should not be there but might have been left in place and general signs that the bricks and mortar are in good or bad shape. We then take the appropriate steps depending on what we find.

In the case of this fire as soon as we looked underneath the fire the carpet running up behind the unit was clearly visible. My apprentice who only has eight weeks experience could see there was a problem. I pointed it out to the business owner and continued to work. We cut back the carpet and underlayment, completed our safety checks and put the fire back in place. I was about to undertake a mini tightness test (checking the internal gas fittings of the fire with a gas sniffer) when my detector started buzzing to call my attention to a gas leak. I checked around the fire and couldn’t detect anything so as I worked my way across the room towards the gas restrictor (the point where the gas pipe comes up through the floor and runs towards the fire) the meter was showing a large leak. Interestingly enough, we hadn’t touched the restrictor as we had the gas turned off at the metre.

Of course the culprit had been the carpet fitter. He would have had to remove the fire in order to carpet up behind it. Once he finished laying the carpet he would have tried to re-connect the fire before moving on to the next room. Unfortunately he left three VERY dangerous faults:

1. He left a small gas leak that was small enough that you couldn’t sniff it but was very real. The sniffer picked it up immediately when it was switched on and about one meter away from the actual leak. The carpet fitter had finished the job almost a year ago. Long time to have a gas leak in your office!
2. The other BIG issue is that when the carpet was wrapped up behind the fire it blocked up the air relief hole at the bottom of the closure plate. This particular fire requires  that the relief  hole is open for proper operation.
3. NO ONE! I mean NO ONE should be so stupid as to thinking that carpet should be wrapped up BEHIND a gas fire. Hot fire. Flammable carpet!

So the lesson here is simple. If you have someone on your property to do work and you can see that they’ll have to touch something related to gas, electrics or plumbing. Ask them HOW they will be getting that portion of the work completed that they are unqualified to undertake. If they shrug their shoulders or give you that tooth sucking far away look call someone else. Even if someone has completed work for you which you feel may be unsafe call Gas Safe Register for gas related work and NIC EIC for electric related work.

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