TECHNICAL BULLETIN
ISSUE 32 AUGUST 2019
UNSAFE GAS INSTALLATIONS UNDERSTANDING AND IDENTIFYING ANDY FLOOK BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, SAVA
Negotiating your way through a property whilst giving due consideration to any gas installation can be a tough challenge, and while a Gas Safe registered engineer is sufficiently qualified to inspect gas installations, it is worth residential practitioners ensuring a high level of appreciation and understanding of what a safe installation should look like, and more importantly what an unsafe installation looks like. Where to start?
a commercial property which are legitimately used as sleeping accommodation). As you might imagine, it’s a wide-ranging document but for the purposes of this article, I place emphasis on Regulation 29 which states: “(9) Where a person performs work on a gas appliance he shall immediately thereafter examine – (a) the effectiveness of any flue; (b) the supply of combustion air; (c) its operating pressure of heat input or, where necessary, both; (d) its operation so as to ensure its safe functioning”
Aside from the gas safety installation and use regulations, which underpin much of the legislative requirements around gas installation, there is also a normative reference document called ‘Gas industry unsafe situations procedure’1, which is specifically used by gas engineers to interpret and decide on required action based on the severity of any unsafe situation. It’s a useful document for anyone working in the built environment. The following insight is very much a brief, snapshot interpretation of the procedures, and should in no way be given precedence over the legislative document.
This is important because, for the most part, where any installation has suitable flue configuration to exhaust products of combustion and the appliance installed (if required) has an adequate supply of air to fuel the combustion process and is burning the right amount of fuel with no leakage of gas into the atmosphere, it’s likely an installation that will not cause harm to any homeowner and
Legislation
The ’Gas safety installation and use’ regulations encompass all areas of gas safety in a domestic dwelling (they do not cover commercial property, unless there are areas of 1 https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/media/2622/igem-g-11-gas-industry-unsafesituations-procedure-april-2018-amendments.pdf
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