Advantis Home Maintenance Ltd.

Danger of the Week Award - Cowboy Gas Fitter

Here is yet another example of the poor workmanship and unsafe situations that we see everyday! This boiler was removed to make way for a new condensing boiler. When we pulled out the old flue out what we discovered was this mess. Can you guess why this happened and what else we found?

It was clear to us what had happened when we looked at all the clues that were left behind. There were two roof trusses that were cut almost all the way through and the boiler was mounted at an odd angle. Couple those issues with the taped up flue and we could see what had happened to cause all of these events.

The gas fitter must have left his tape measure home the day he dragged this boiler up into the loft to replace one that had stopped working. He probably didn’t have a core drill either so figuered he’s just use the old flue hole. So after removing the old boiler he mounted up the back plate for the new boiler and connected up all the pipe work. Then came the BIG problems! When he went to lift the boiler up to hang it off the mounting jig it wouldn’t fit because the roofing truss was in the way. Actually two of them were in the way. They needn’t have been in the way had he measured it before he started. His solution? Saw a chunk out of the roofing trusses!

Now that the roof was weakened it was time to hang the boiler on the mounting jig again. Now it fits and all of the pipe work can be connected. All that’s left is the flue and the electrics. Unfortunately, the flue hole must not have been large enough for the new flue so it looks as though he took the old flue from the original boiler and taped it to a short piece of flue from the new boiler and used a bit of tape to connect the two pieces. The only good news was that the air space between the inside and outside brickwork was at the very peak of the house or the Carbon Monoxide build up would surely have spread throughout the house getting progressively worse as the bit of tape dried out.

So all that was left to screw up was the electrics. And so he did. It was only a length of cable snaked through a hollow wall to a downstairs single plug with no fuse and no way to isolate the boiler. Also, the boiler was effectively being protected by a 32amp breaker and not the 3 amp fuse that is required.

We repaired the damaged trusses, ran new cables to a switched and fused spur and of course flushed the entire system and re-drilled a new flue at the proper location to avoid the problems that Cowboy Gas Fitter had.

Hire a professional fitter or take a chance at having your house wrecked or worse!