gas leak

sparkleybitz

hello , having alot of work done on our house at the moment as it is really damp and mouldy we noticed some months ago a gasious smell ?
we called the gas engineer from the local council to take a look , he found nothing and said it was most probably the dampness we could smell .
a couple of weeks later our boiler broke so again we called council and they sent an engineer and he says our pcb board needs to be replaced , while he was here we asked him to test for a gas leak , he did and again he found nothing .
over the next few weeks myself and my partner started to feel unwell with bad headaches and nausea, dizzy episodes , we couldn't quite work out why we were feeling this way .
now , this week 24th oct our gas top up card broke so we went through all the relevant channels to aquire a new one , all day of telephone calls to british gas and running to the shop to top up and £40 later.
this still didnt work so they at last sent out a british gas engineer .
this is where it gets messy , he tells us did we know we have had a significant gas leak for some time and this would attribute to our illness , he shut everything off and has labelled our meter as immediate danger (threat to life) quite how we didnt blow ourselves up we dont know .

my question is this :- can we claim back all the money that we have lost due to the leak ? as we have been putting an awful lot in the last few months .

can we sue the council for not picking this up previously and causing us to be ill because of this ?

regards richard

gas4you

No, I doubt you will get any money back, who knows how much gas you have lost anyway. Probably not as much as you think.

Yes, complain to the council.

I take it by British Gas, you mean National Grid?

You should have called National Grid in the first place if you thought you could smell gas. It is a free service available 24/7, 365 days a year.

spiro

The symptoms you listed (bad headaches and nausea, dizzy episodes) sound like the ones you get from CO leaking which is caused by a problem with a boiler or fire. Was it a BG boiler engineer or meter worker they sent and why did they send him?

C_Mababejive

Gas leaks suspected or otherwise/inside and outside should be reported to the national gas emergency service on 0800 111 999.

If the smell in your house is/was unburnt gas then it is unlikely to have made you feel unwell in the concentrations which are encountered in domestic gas escape situations. Also,domestic gas escapes do not tend to be of significant volume and therefore the cost issue will be insignificant.

If there has been a possible leak of combustion products which may or may not contain significant concentrations of CO,that is a matter for the owner of the appliances i.e your council ?

chanz4

If the leak was recorded ( its upto you to take it up with the council), it was before the meter this would be the suppliers although you wouldnt be paying for it.

Ewatai

if the meter itself was the problem due to, love saying this, a leaky nipple or something similar then yes you can claim back the gas as this would have been recorded through the meter. if it was after the meter then yes take it up with the council.

annie_tanks

I have every sympathy with the OP.After years of people saying that they could smell gas in my house I bought a a CO2 detector, and it went off within months of having it.Years of having very little money resulted in just about everything in the home being neglected.Well I called out the emergency gas leak people who shut down every single gas appliance, with a condemed notice.So with only the immersion heater for hot water it proved a very expensive time to get back all the gas appliances with new stuff...cooker..boiler..
The CO2 detector possibly saved my life and that of my sons..now I take one everywhere I stay..even abroad..along side the smoke detector..

dshart

I am not sure if you could sue the council for not discovering the leak but you should complain to them as the engineer should have carried out some very basic checks to prove there was no leakage.

I had a similar issue last December when I arranged for a cooker service, on completion of service the engineer did a basic check and found there was a slight leak somewhere. He was very helpful and went out of his way to try and locate the leak bearing in mind he was only there to service the cooker. He confirmed the leak was not on the cooker and also checked the boiler but could still not trace the leak. He then advised calling the national gas emergency service.

They came out and all they did was confirm there was a leak the same way the engineer had and finding a leak they blanked it at the meter put a do not use sign on it and left. This was right in the middle of the cold snap we had last December. We were left to find someone at short notice who could trace the leak and repair it before we could get the gas turned on again.

So although it is advisable to inform the national gas emergency service of any suspected leak, just be aware that they will only confirm if a leak is present and if there is will shut off your gas, so be prepared to call out another engineer to trace the exact point of the leak and fix it.

lemontart

annie_tanks wrote: »

I have every sympathy with the OP.After years of people saying that they could smell gas in my house I bought a a CO2 detector, and it went off within months of having it.Years of having very little money resulted in just about everything in the home being neglected.Well I called out the emergency gas leak people who shut down every single gas appliance, with a condemed notice.So with only the immersion heater for hot water it proved a very expensive time to get back all the gas appliances with new stuff...cooker..boiler..
The CO2 detector possibly saved my life and that of my sons..now I take one everywhere I stay..even abroad..along side the smoke detector..

sounds like you had two problems a gas leak and appliance not burning properly producing co. A co alarm does not detect gas, it detects carbon monoxide which has no smell. You can get gas detectors a good idea for those who have lost their sense of smell.

Also even if just one person says those words a smell of gas call 0800 111 999 we are available 24 hrs a day 7 days a week and 365 days a year even open an extra day on a leap year. I does not matter if no one else can smell it ...........you should never smell it no one should.

C_Mababejive

Domestic natural gas detectors are available from various retailers on amazon etc.

One such detector has a lower trigger level of 3 LEL. The human nose can smell gas at levels way way below that level so if you had a concentration of 3 LEL in the general atmosphere of your home you would either have to be totally insensitive to smell or else the house would be empty !

Such detectors may be useful in situations such as an older person who may have memory difficulties (eg appliance left on unlit..) but in most other situations,the human nose is best.

It is worth noting that the lower combustible limit of natural gas is a concentration of around 5% gas in air. That is a phenomenal amount of gas in a normal domestic situation and is rarely encountered. You would be very well aware of the gas leak long before concentrations reached that level.