Immediately dangerous work in house just completed on

ejeavons

Hi all - apologies in advance if this is a long one. 

Three weeks ago today we completed on our first property and yesterday our gas supply was cut off by Cadent. 

Long story short, I had someone from our energy supplier come to fit a smart meter, couldn’t find the EVC for gas and so had to report to Cadent. EVC was subsequently located (not accessible, the back of a cupboard had to be cut out to get to it) but Cadent attended as already reported. Cadent advised that the location of the meter and EVC was dangerous due to previous owners extension “building over” it where it was on the original outside wall - should have been moved to outside during the extension as now sits in cavity of wall and could leak into the wall.  While attending, they also found the immediately dangerous flue on the boiler and cut off gas.  Our issue now is that we are going to have to pay to make right both the flue and the meter moving, for work that was completed by a builder we didn’t have any dealings with, signed off for building regs (we do have the certificate, do we take it up directly with them and/or who is the regulatory body for them?) as well as the fact that our surveyor seems also to have missed it in the home buyers survey (Cadent and no less than 4 gas safe registered engineers are adamant that they should have spotted it - they included photos and comments on both the meter and flue in their report with no issues raised). 

Any advice on how to deal/ anyone who’s had to claw back financially for something like this would be so appreciated. 

Thanks in advance. 

jefaz07

Is the service built over plastic? It happens A LOT and still gets signed off. Builders who are cheaper will often do this so they don’t have to pay to have the service moved. 

If it’s plastic is classed as At Risk - No Action

And what is wrong with the flue to make it ID? Is there any paperwork left to describe the issues? 

[Deleted User]

You are going to find it hard to recover anything now. This sort of thing should have been picked up by a detailed survey before buying.

canaldumidi

Doubtful asurvey would have revealed this. RICS surveyors are not gas-trained.

Did you get a report from a GasSafe registered engineer? If yes, you might have come-back against that.

Otherwise, it's a hard lesson learned....

Thrugelmir

Your surveyor would have recommended an independent inspection in their report to you. As said previously not their area of expertise. 

jonners666

Sorry but the time for checking these sort of things is BEFORE you complete. You own it, so it's your problem now. 

ejeavons

jefaz07 said:

Is the service built over plastic? It happens A LOT and still gets signed off. Builders who are cheaper will often do this so they don’t have to pay to have the service moved. 

If it’s plastic is classed as At Risk - No Action

And what is wrong with the flue to make it ID? Is there any paperwork left to describe the issues? 

The meter itself is accessible but Cadent classed it as a “built over” because the extension has essentially been built onto the side of the house on which the meter sits - it should have been moved at time of building, as you mention. 

The flue is in 2 different air zones and so was classified as ID - I’m not an engineer but both Cadent and all engineers who’ve seen it agree on that. We have paperwork from Cadent to progress it yes. 

ejeavons

jonners666 said:

Sorry but the time for checking these sort of things is BEFORE you complete. You own it, so it's your problem now. 

Thanks. We thought we had checked it, we had a surveyor and the building regs sign-off before we completed. I’m not an expert in any of this so not sure how I could have know otherwise. Lesson learned I guess that any property we buy in future needs to be checked by two surveyors!?

ejeavons

[Deleted User] said:

You are going to find it hard to recover anything now. This sort of thing should have been picked up by a detailed survey before buying.

Yes we thought the survey we had would have picked it up too. Lesson learned I guess that we need a few opinions in future. 

ejeavons

canaldumidi said:

Doubtful asurvey would have revealed this. RICS surveyors are not gas-trained.

Did you get a report from a GasSafe registered engineer? If yes, you might have come-back against that.

Otherwise, it's a hard lesson learned....

Thanks. My understanding is that although they obviously aren’t gas safe engineers, they should be suitably qualified to know when a meter is sitting in a wall cavity and therefore dangerous, as well as an immediately dangerous flue. I guess not from what I’m seeing here!

Thrugelmir

ejeavons said:

canaldumidi said:

Doubtful asurvey would have revealed this. RICS surveyors are not gas-trained.

Did you get a report from a GasSafe registered engineer? If yes, you might have come-back against that.

Otherwise, it's a hard lesson learned....

Thanks. My understanding is that although they obviously aren’t gas safe engineers, they should be suitably qualified to know when a meter is sitting in a wall cavity and therefore dangerous, as well as an immediately dangerous flue. I guess not from what I’m seeing here!

Would you ask a car salesperson to mechanically inspect a car you were purchasing?  Arguably they are suitably qualified as well as work in the trade.