Vendor refused full boiler inspection

DVardysShadow

Sugared-frog wrote: »

We had the Gas Safe engineer to check over our new house the day after getting it - he looked at the fire in the front room - said it was unsafe and that he had to CUT the gas pipe leading to the fire and seal off the end. If the person doing the check found something similar then they could be left without a boiler which in this weather I could understand their reluctance not to be in that situation. In our case the fire was only about 8 years old. (And luckily the boiler was OK).

Where does the right to do that derive from? If you were owner occupier and not tenant, you should have refused him permission.

paulsad

I took my vendors word that the boiler/ heating system was fine (had a "full" survey - waste of bloody money!) - Result... hot water but no heating, had to replace the lot, lucky for me I am a bit handy and my son is a heating engineer, so between us we replaced the lot (fitting a new boiler to very old rads can cause problems with rusty crud circulating into the boiler). Cost me about £2K even so.
So yes I was a plank - don't you be!
On the other hand I did have a buyer once who kept sending round "experts" from his dad's building firm blatantly trying to get the price down with phoney tricks & non existent problems - eventually we got cheesed off and sold it to someone else.

Sugared-frog

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Where does the right to do that derive from? If you were owner occupier and not tenant, you should have refused him permission.

I'm probably gullible but I believed him when he said he couldn't leave me with a fire that I could turn on the minute he left. It is something we were going to replace in the long run so I wasn't really upset. Are you telling me he didn't have the right to cut it off?

I've not been totally impressed with him - after he left saying some of the radiators didn't work very well due to age, my husband had a go and managed to get some of them working better by changing the valve bit (he knew what he was doing even if I didn't).

roger196

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Where does the right to do that derive from? If you were owner occupier and not tenant, you should have refused him permission.

Current procedure may be different, but this was the position a few years ago.
If the owner did not give permission to disconnect an immediately dangerous appliance, you infomed the householder you would have to notify the gas supplier They would cut off the whole gas supply. It would then be very expensive to get re-connected. In my experience, never failed.
Regulation 34 of the Gas Safety Regualtions 1994

DVardysShadow

roger196 wrote: »

Current procedure may be different, but this was the position a few years ago.
If the owner did not give permission to disconnect an immediately dangerous appliance, you infomed the householder you would have to notify the gas supplier They would cut off the whole gas supply. It would then be very expensive to get re-connected. In my experience, never failed.
Regulation 34 of the Gas Safety Regualtions 1994

Thanks

Unsafe appliances

34.—(1) The responsible person for any premises shall not use a gas appliance or permit a gas appliance to be used if at any time he knows or has reason to suspect—

(a)that there is insufficient supply of air available for the appliance for proper combustion at the point of combustion;

(b)that the removal of the products of combustion from the appliance is not being or cannot safely be carried out;

(c)that the room or internal space in which the appliance is situated is not adequately ventilated for the purpose of providing air containing a sufficiency of oxygen for the persons present in the room, or in, or in the vicinity of, the internal space while the appliance is in use;

(d)that any gas is escaping from the appliance or from any gas fitting used in connection with the appliance; or

(e)that the appliance or any part of it or any gas fitting or other works for the supply of gas used in connection with the appliance is so faulty or maladjusted that it cannot be used without constituting a danger to any person.

(2) Any person engaged in carrying out any work in relation to a gas main, service pipe, service pipework, gas storage vessel or gas fitting who knows or has reason to suspect that any defect or other circumstance referred to in paragraph (1) above exists shall forthwith take all reasonably practicable steps to inform the responsible person for the premises in which the appliance is situated and, where different, the owner of the appliance or, where neither is reasonably practicable, the supplier of gas to the appliance.

(3) In paragraph (2) above the expression “work” shall be construed as if, in the definition of “work” in regulation 2(1) above, every reference to a gas fitting were a reference to a gas main, service pipe, service pipework, gas storage vessel or gas fitting.

That certainly does not confer a right to cut off the gas to a defective appliance! It imposes a duty to inform the 'responsible person' who is presumably the occupier in the case of a owner-occupier or the landlord in the case of a tenanted property.

Unless anyone has other links, I am inclined to say that cutting and capping a pipe is acting 'ultra vires' - beyond powers. Placing a seal on the controlling gas !!!! or plugging of a screwed fitting seems more appropriate - but even this does not appear to have a legal basis.

No doubt British Gas have done this and still do. I find a serious problem with actually CUTTING a pipe to deal with this problem - I think that without the householders consent this would be criminal damage.

And Reg 34 does not appear to confer any right on the supplier to cut off the supply either.