Rented house gas safety check - gas fire & bird droppings

Stamina

Hi,

I was called yesterday by a Gas Safe engineer asking to book an appointment for our yearly Gas Safety cerification. We booked an appointment for this afternoon.

On checking our gas fireplace, which has had issues with bird droppings, which have now been resolved through installation of a chimney cowl, it has become clear that there is a large amount of bird droppings in the fire. As these are toxic I'm extremely uncomfortable with the fireplace being lit without these being cleaned up. Looking back at the inventory photos, the bird droppings are visible in photographs of the fire.

I advised the letting agent of this this morning, and that I would either like to postpone the appointment and for them to professionally clean the fireplace (and ideally the chimney), or for the gas fireplace to not be checked and to be disconnected.

Their line has been 'if you don't allow the gas fire to be checked, the gas safety check will fail, and your gas will be disconnected from the supply'.

I believe this to be untrue, but am struggling to find concrete resources to back me up.

They have offered to cut off the fire at a charge of £35 now, and £75 to reconnect it when we leave the property. I feel this is very unreasonable. They are also trying to charge me for rearranging the gas safety check for after a professional clean.

We do not use the gas fire and are not interested in using it. I don't really care whether it gets cleaned and/or certified as we have no intention to use it.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. I believe that I should not have to pay for a rearranged safety check, that the engineer will be able to condemn the fireplace this afternoon but certify the boiler, and life will go on. Am I correct?

Thanks in advance!

jk0

Why not just get a bucket of soapy water & a cloth ready to clean out the fireplace when the guy removes the fire?

Bigphil1474

The gas engineer will either certify the appliances as safe to use or not. If you don't use the fire, it won't matter to you if it gets condemned. If it was me, I'd let the gas engineer come as arranged, tell him about the fire, and he can decide what to do. They must check all gas appliances. They won't disconnect the gas supply to the premises, but may isolate the supply to an appliance - depends on the issue. Usually they'd put a sticker on it saying don't use or similar. Only exception might be if there was a leak and they had to turn off the supply to stop the leak. I think you're best bet as a tenant is just to let the engineer do his job and let him sort it out.

[Deleted User]

I would think that once the fire is lit the droppings will simply incinerate up the chimney in smoke..Seems the cleanest way of removing them..burn them

Stamina

The bird droppings are in the fire itself. I tried to clean it but there's loads of it and it's all caught up in the white material under the pebbles. I'm not sure if the white stuff needs replacing. It's also soaked into the pebbles which seem to be made out of a porous material. If the engineer lights the fire it'll be setting fire to a large amount of bird droppings...

I was concerned because I did speak to the gas engineer and he was saying as far as he's concerned he'll definitely light it, but I was reading about the toxicity of bird droppings etc. I appreciate it should go up the chimney, but it just didn't seem worth the risk when we don't use the fire anyway.

In the end decided the pain wasn't worth it, and just go ahead and let him do it (assuming he's still comfortable doing so when he inspects it in person) and just leave the room while it's happening in case it doesn't all go up the chimney...