Should we pursue it?

LEJC

Was the property a rental property before you purchased it...?
Its my understanding that a gas safety certificate is only a requirement when it is rented and therefore you do not need to produce or provide a gas safety certificate when selling a house that is owner occupied.

lozzaj83

It was an owned property. I was trying to upload a pic of the fireplace but don't seem to be able to.

pinkteapot

If carbon monoxide was "pouring" into the room then you'd have felt the effects when you viewed the house and the fire was on.

The previous owners would only have known that the installation was faulty if they had a carbon monoxide alarm go off, or had become ill. If not, how do you expect them to have known?

Please forget the hysterical "my baby could have been killed" (he hasn't been). You can't pursue someone for what "might have" happened.

The installation of the fire needs to be corrected. Have you had a quote to get this work done? I'm not sure if the indemnity insurance will cover that cost (others may know?). If it does, great. If not, it's one of the costs of home ownership.

rpc

The seller isn't expected to know so unless they lied (i.e. the knew it was dodgy and misrepresented it) then there's no direct claim.

The indemnity might be worth looking at - if this was offered in place of gas inspection reports then one assumes it is there to claim on if the gas installation turns out to be unsafe...

oldbaldman

It appears that the relevant documentation was sought by your solicitor from the vendor via their solicitor, and when this could not be found an indemnity policy was taken out to cover any subsequent costs incurred by you?

This matter is best pursued via your solicitor. The vendor will presumably have completed the "sellers information" forms? It would be interesting to see how they refer to the gas appliance.

The EA will have no input or responsibility with this unless the vender told them about the dodgy appliance and they in turn covered up the fact or failed to disclose it to you, which you are unlikely to be able to prove.

Speak to your solicitor before you do anything else. Suggestions above that there is nothing that you can do, or it is all your responsibility when you buy is incorrect.

obm

anselld

lozzaj83 wrote: »

They took out an indemnity policy to cover the gas certificates as they couldn't produce one of their own.

Pointless. You will probably find the indemnity only covers the risk of enforcement action by the Local Authority. As you have found it does absolutely nothing towards confirming the device is properly installed.

Effectively, you knew it was a non-compliant installation and you decided to proceed.

bris

Did the gas engineer who had it on do proper checks? If he didn't do a flue flow test then he should be reported, this is the first thing you do before you turn the fire on. If the smoke pellet doesn't flow up the chimney and spills back into the room then it fails and the test can go no further until the flue or chimney is rectified.


If he turned the fire on before first checking the natural pull of the flue then the gas safe register would want to know about this, safety is number 1 on their list.


So if you really want to know how safe your flue and chimney is get a gas safe registered engineer in to check it.