Cost of Repairing a Gas Leak, £600??

MonsieurT

Hello all.

Was 9 days without gas provision (no heating, hot water using immersion heater, no hob) due to a gas leak. Smell was coming from behind skirting in hallway (near gas meter which is just outside basement door).

I tried to get my insurance (Privilege) or their associated Home Emergency service to at least do "trace and access" but they said "not covered". Only action was the Gas Emergency Service turning off the gas supply. (Home Emergency did send an engineer but he couldn't get permission to even remove the skirting.)

And it was just around Easter weekend so I wasn't going to call an engineer and pay double rates or whatever.

After weekend, called around & was quoted £100/hour by one guy with good reviews so hired him. He arrived next day with a work mate (plumber).

Engineer found tiniest drop at the meter (almost negligible), used "sniffer" to narrow down the leaking area of the pipe. Affected pipe was a steel horizontal 1m section as the gas main enters the property thru wall behind skirting & connects to copper piping that then dives into the floor. Thankfully the leak was in the accessible horizontal bit (bit of building crud around the pipe, was hardly embedded).

Meter monitoring, skirting removal, local detection, replacing the steel section with copper pipe, including the outdoor section up to the meter itself, filling hole in wall = £600. £400 for gas engineer, £150 for his plumber mate, £50 for bits n parking.

Is it me or is this about £200 over what you would expect for such a job (in London)?

QrizB

You were quoted £100 per hour for labour.

How long were they on site?

MonsieurT

Hi QrizB.

They were 4 hours on site. The gas engineer's reasoning was: "if I'd been on my own, it would have been another 2 hours".

When I came to pay him (after my above post), I told him I was not best pleased with his explanation given the original pricing, and I reminded him that his website claims "no hidden costs" etc. He agreed he hadn't been "clear enough", that the job was indeed a one-man affair, though he re-iterated his reasoning that "it would have taken me 2 hours more on my own".

He was gracious enough to charge me £500 instead of £600, for which I am thankful.

I'm still wondering how long a job like this should take (including having to step out to find the right parts etc) and cost on average.

Anyone else had a similar repair or know what it costs?

TroubledTarts

Well it's the internet and someone will say they can do it for £200 and then someone will say £800.

Being London prices will be higher, also a lot of trades have upped their prices due to increased diesel prices.

This was an emergency as well so even if you priced it up with another tradesman that won't give a fair comparison.

Have you been fleeced, no, did you pay above the average, maybe....so true in everything we buy even a chocolate bar from the convenient corner shop to a multi pack from the supermarket

pfpf

and i thought the meter we had replaced last year was old 😂

MonsieurT

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81955897#Comment_81955897

Erm, yes, it's old. We like our cubic feet here. 😉

Any ideas on the topic itself? 🤨

MWT

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6663300/cost-of-repairing-a-gas-leak-600

Is it me or is this about £200 over what you would expect for such a job (in London)?

It is you.

Given this was an investigation then a fix including the parts and the time to get them then expecting this to be £400 all in is not reasonable when you already agreed to £100 an hour.

WiserMiser

Don't forget that he probably was hit by the congestion charge and quite likely ULEZ as well. Everything's expensive right now, especially in London.

EssexHebridean

I get the confusion over the hourly rate, but I'd agree with others that as much as it might feel painful, two chaps working to trace an issue and fix it in the space of 4 hours feels like the charge was reasonable.

pseudodox

Occurs to me that whatever the price it was worth paying to get the problem fixed. If the leak continued and escalated to an explosion putting property & human life at risk then it was a relatively cheap fix compared to what expense such an occurence may have led to.

QrizB

… it was a relatively cheap fix compared to what expense such an occurence may have led to.

A fairly extreme example from yesterday's news (fortunately no-one was killed):

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde5gj3wr79o