LondonLuke Posted April 1, 2013 Report Share Posted April 1, 2013 it is illegal to put your own boiler Not true. Though debate able on how you interpret the regs. It's like in shooting "being accompanied by the landowner" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 3, 2013 Report Share Posted April 3, 2013 (edited) Ben give this guy a ring mick Bruce 07775706793 he's onlyy up the road from you on Bowes Lyons estate.awesome plumber he will have it fixed in no time Edited April 3, 2013 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al4x Posted April 3, 2013 Report Share Posted April 3, 2013 Don't let him anywhere near a gas boiler, oil maybe but gas he hasn't got a clue speaks the voice of experience and £600 lighter for his experimenting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonathanL Posted April 3, 2013 Report Share Posted April 3, 2013 That said its completely legal for anyone not gas safe to fit a boiler in their own home. Only becoming an issue when you come to sell. I'm pretty sure that you have to be registered to physically connect it to the public gas main, whether it's in your own property or not. I may be wrong on that though. J. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twistedsanity Posted April 3, 2013 Report Share Posted April 3, 2013 As per competent person it means anyone qualified to do the work the HSE only recognise gas safe registered persons as competent have a play something goes wrong you won't have a leg to stand on regs are there for a reason not for gas fitters to make money interesting, since when did the HSE make the laws and legal definitions of words? i have a complete but long amusing set of emails between myself and the Gas Safe people from last year which was eventually elevated to managment level as even their own trained employees were completley ignorant of the gas safe regs they are supposed to enforce , it began with "anybody who isnt gas safe registered can't touch gas equipment as its illegal sir without exception" and ended with " yes you can work on the local peace hospices equipment for free as a voulnteer without being gas safe registered sir" , they were happy to try to charge me £1500 to get there blessings to do the work though ! , the Gas regs which are being discussed don't define "competant" and its the regs we have to adhere to not the advice of the HSE , so anybody who deems themselves a competant person can work on gas appliances so long as its not for reward or gain , which is quite a scary prospect , but if it all went pete tong i wouldnt want to be the one in the dock had i not taken the courses and attained the qualifications i hold Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLuke Posted April 3, 2013 Report Share Posted April 3, 2013 interesting, since when did the HSE make the laws and legal definitions of words? i have a complete but long amusing set of emails between myself and the Gas Safe people from last year which was eventually elevated to managment level as even their own trained employees were completley ignorant of the gas safe regs they are supposed to enforce , it began with "anybody who isnt gas safe registered can't touch gas equipment as its illegal sir without exception" and ended with " yes you can work on the local peace hospices equipment for free as a voulnteer without being gas safe registered sir" , they were happy to try to charge me £1500 to get there blessings to do the work though ! , the Gas regs which are being discussed don't define "competant" and its the regs we have to adhere to not the advice of the HSE , so anybody who deems themselves a competant person can work on gas appliances so long as its not for reward or gain , which is quite a scary prospect , but if it all went pete tong i wouldnt want to be the one in the dock had i not taken the courses and attained the qualifications i hold Couldn't agree more. I find Gas Safe one of the worst companies you can deal with. Their technical team I am sure are deliberately unhelpful and deliberately vague. If I had the time and effort I would start a campaign to have their monopoly taken away from the gas world. I don't know how it is justified. Yes it's dangerous but so is electricity but alas competition is allowed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Holliday Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 First thing to check is the air pressure in the expansion vessel (big red thing)you can only do this when there is no pressure in the system,it should be ! bar if it is lower then use a foot pump to increase the pressure.If this pressue drop on the vessel keeps happening then you need to change the vessel.Another cause could be a leaking rad valve but it will not be obvious as the water evaporates as it gets warm.The PRV only tend to pass if the pressure increases to 3 bar. This is the first thing you should check. Once you have established you have the correct air charge in the EXPANSION VESSEL (bewtween 0.5 and 1.o bar air charge with zero water pressure) and it is holding you can then check the Pressure Relief Valve to see if it is letting by. Once it has been proved that the above two points are ruled out of the equasion and the system is still losing pressure you need to look at your system. Anything above the ground floor should present a leak fairly quickly. Any pipework under the ground floor will need to be valved off and tested in sections to prove where the leak is. I have had 6 jobs this year alone which involve a sealed system depressurising so I know my onions. And yes, the operatives on the gas safe techincal help line are a bunch of miserable ******** for the most part and yes, they are generally unhelpful if you are seeking a specific answer to the Gas Regs but they do have their good points. They won the contract to operate a register for licensed gas engineers for 10 years after the EU decided that CORGI should not be granted the license year in year out as it was closing off any competition so the Monoplies Commission told our Government to put it out to tender. Capita won the license and came up with The Gas Safe Register. The reason we have it is that many ofthe general public want someone who is deemed a professional to carry out work in their home and want some kind of recourse if they screw up. Gas Safe Register offers this yet for those of us who carry out work to a high standard we have to explain that this is the end result of the 'Blame Culture' the UK public have created. We, as registered gas engineers, have to pass these costs on so we can continue to work in peoples homes and suffer the odd ignorant rebuff that we are 'ripping people off' every once in a while. Look at your own back door before you start laying **** down on ours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLuke Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 (edited) And yes, the operatives on the gas safe techincal help line are a bunch of miserable ******** for the most part and yes, they are generally unhelpful if you are seeking a specific answer to the Gas Regs but they do have their good points. They won the contract to operate a register for licensed gas engineers for 10 years after the EU decided that CORGI should not be granted the license year in year out as it was closing off any competition so the Monoplies Commission told our Government to put it out to tender. Capita won the license and came up with The Gas Safe Register. The reason we have it is that many ofthe general public want someone who is deemed a professional to carry out work in their home and want some kind of recourse if they screw up. Gas Safe Register offers this yet for those of us who carry out work to a high standard we have to explain that this is the end result of the 'Blame Culture' the UK public have created. We, as registered gas engineers, have to pass these costs on so we can continue to work in peoples homes and suffer the odd ignorant rebuff that we are 'ripping people off' every once in a while. Look at your own back door before you start laying **** down on ours. Ageee on all fronts and as gas regd business I appreciate all this first hand My niggle with it is why, unlike electricity, we only have the one option. I appreciate gas is dangerous but so is electricity! Edited April 4, 2013 by LondonLuke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twistedsanity Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 "The reason we have it is that many ofthe general public want someone who is deemed a professional to carry out work in their home and want some kind of recourse if they screw up. Gas Safe Register offers this yet for those of us who carry out work to a high standard we have to explain that this is the end result of the 'Blame Culture' the UK public have created. We, as registered gas engineers, have to pass these costs on so we can continue to work in peoples homes and suffer the odd ignorant rebuff that we are 'ripping people off' every once in a while. Look at your own back door before you start laying **** down on ours." very true, but so is the misconception that in order to be a gas safe engineer you have to know the ins and outs of every make of boiler, as im sure you are aware a plumber must be gas safe registered to enable him to legally install a central heating system which is fine and dandy but the general public and the plumbers ego get whipped into a frenzy when the public call in a gas safe registered plumber to fix a boiler and the plumbers ego tells him that due to his registration with gas safe he is in fact a boiler fixing god , which they are not more often than not, so the public think that the entire gas safe thing is a rip off because the plumber pretends he is a competant boiler engineer and the public's ignorance agrees with him , they end up with a huge bill and a still broken boiler and feeling very ripped off indeed by the gas safe engineer they used Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Holliday Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 Ageee on all fronts and as gas regd business I appreciate all this first hand My niggle with it is why, unlike electricity, we only have the one option. I appreciate gas is dangerous but so is electricity! The reason we have only one register for gas engineers is to save any confusion about who is registered with whom and for what. I can't speak for the electricians but they obviously have more than one for a reason. Have you ever asked an electrician why they have more than one approved body to register with? very true, but so is the misconception that in order to be a gas safe engineer you have to know the ins and outs of every make of boiler, as im sure you are aware a plumber must be gas safe registered to enable him to legally install a central heating system which is fine and dandy but the general public and the plumbers ego get whipped into a frenzy when the public call in a gas safe registered plumber to fix a boiler and the plumbers ego tells him that due to his registration with gas safe he is in fact a boiler fixing god , which they are not more often than not, so the public think that the entire gas safe thing is a rip off because the plumber pretends he is a competant boiler engineer and the public's ignorance agrees with him , they end up with a huge bill and a still broken boiler and feeling very ripped off indeed by the gas safe engineer they used I'm not saying we are all saints. Like every profession, you have your good and bad within. I don't operate a 'callout fee'. This is something I detest as it really does look like the public are being scammed. The trouble is the public still have this ingrained belief that all 'plumbers' have a call out charge. This means that the guy charges you just for turning up regardless if he actually does anything. The onus is really on the home owner to ensure that the person they are contracting to do the work is suitably qualified and experience to carry out such work. The plumber also has a responsibilty to ask the client relevant questions about the work they are enquiring about. For example, when a new client phones me they will nearly always ask me what my call out charge is. My first question to them is 'what is the enquiry regarding?' If it's not within my remit, something like gas fired warm air heating for example, I will say them that they will need to contact a suitably qualified and experienced engineer to do the work for them and point them in the direction of the gas safe website. If the work is within my remit I will tell them that I have a minimum charge for the first hour on site. Within the first hour I would expect to at least have a good idea of what the problem is, assuming I haven't identifed by then, and have an idea of how much it would cost them to have it rectified. Sometimes the diagnosis can go over the first hour in which case I then charge every 15 minutes. The client is told this and I like to make sure the client understands them before I come out to them. If they don't like the charges for whatever reason then they have the opportunity to tell me before I even set out. The majority of the time it works well but there will always be the odd one who thinks I'm ripping them off, sad to say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twistedsanity Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 It's a difficult situation indeed, but I bet if I phoned 100 gas safe registered plumbers this afternoon and told them my boiler was fubared 99 of them would come out and charge me money to "try" and fix it despite having no formal training on boiler repairs whatsoever , which is where the problem lies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al4x Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 It's a difficult situation indeed, but I bet if I phoned 100 gas safe registered plumbers this afternoon and told them my boiler was fubared 99 of them would come out and charge me money to "try" and fix it despite having no formal training on boiler repairs whatsoever , which is where the problem lies thats the problem I had, then the next alarm bell went when he asked for the manual for the boiler. Then got on the helpline to the manufacturer on his third visit having replaced various parts that weren't faulty. £600 later I booked the guy from potterton to come out who diagnosed it correctly on the doorstep fixed it and told us what to do to stop it re occurring. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twistedsanity Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 thats the problem I had, then the next alarm bell went when he asked for the manual for the boiler. Then got on the helpline to the manufacturer on his third visit having replaced various parts that weren't faulty. £600 later I booked the guy from potterton to come out who diagnosed it correctly on the doorstep fixed it and told us what to do to stop it re occurring. you should have told him to refit the old parts , refund your money and Foxtrot Alpha ! after all you were paying him to fix your boiler not to charge you to learn how to fix boilers! if ever i am paying anyone to fix anything the first thing i say is "do not throw away the parts you have replaced because if you cant do the job i am paying you for you will be refitting them before you leave" i would have demanded a full refund or gone down the small claims court route , its cowboys like that who are the cause of all the issues people have described in this thread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al4x Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 the claim was the PCB was showing a fault then the heat exchanger was blocked, which it was but next call out he was claiming other parts must be blocked and that is when he got shown the door and we got someone who said it was the heat exchanger fit a magnaclean and job done Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dazsl Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 here is a link to the hse gas regulations i think some of you should have a good read http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/l56.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Del T Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 thats the problem I had, then the next alarm bell went when he asked for the manual for the boiler. Then got on the helpline to the manufacturer on his third visit having replaced various parts that weren't faulty. £600 later I booked the guy from potterton to come out who diagnosed it correctly on the doorstep fixed it and told us what to do to stop it re occurring. The trouble is how is a gas service engineer expected to know every boiler inside out?? Boiler manufacturers don't tell us when they have upgraded parts on certain models due to problems.Their own engineers know because they are factory trained and they get the internal memos! To some people,a boiler is a boiler.They turn it on and water is heated.They must all work the same and look the same inside, right? All the electrical circuitry is the same,all the pcbs work the same,the gas valve works the same etc etc! Wouldn't it be easy if this were the case! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-Mongrel- Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 It's a difficult situation indeed, but I bet if I phoned 100 gas safe registered plumbers this afternoon and told them my boiler was fubared 99 of them would come out and charge me money to "try" and fix it despite having no formal training on boiler repairs whatsoever , which is where the problem lies Rubbish! First, there is no thing as a Gas Safe plumber, if they are gas safe, they are gas engineers. Second, if they are gas safe they have to demonstrate competence in their required fields, if that is central heating they will have to demonstrate a BASIC knowledge. If you told them your boiler was beyond repair, they are quite able to disagree and propose a repair, it's your choice whether to take them up on it. What is your problem with Gas Safe engineers. I've only read a couple of pages of this thread but already you've had 3 pops at Gas Safe engineers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dazsl Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 must have had a bad date with a gas safe registered person Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-Mongrel- Posted April 4, 2013 Report Share Posted April 4, 2013 The trouble is how is a gas service engineer expected to know every boiler inside out?? Boiler manufacturers don't tell us when they have upgraded parts on certain models due to problems.Their own engineers know because they are factory trained and they get the internal memos! To some people,a boiler is a boiler.They turn it on and water is heated.They must all work the same and look the same inside, right? All the electrical circuitry is the same,all the pcbs work the same,the gas valve works the same etc etc! Wouldn't it be easy if this were the case! This is why you are well advised to try and get a recommended engineer, or at least try and establish an engineers experience. Thing is, boiler engineers are qualified, but not necessarily exerienced. You get inexperienced operatives in all trades, it's just that an inexperienced chippy is unlikely to risk your life , so why do the general public assume that GasSafe registration means that they are experienced/ it means they are registered and have shown basic competency, nothing more. After 20 years in the gas game, I can fix pretty much everything I see, but sure as hell couldn't at 20 years old, and conversely, the new guys coming through struggle to diagnose problems on a 20 year old system. Such is life. Get a recommended, experienced engineer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Kelly Posted April 5, 2013 Report Share Posted April 5, 2013 I frequently ask for the boiler manual and ring the manufacturers technical team when diagnosing a boiler breakdown. Not doing so will inevitably lead to misdiagnosis in some cases and the fitting of the incorrect part. Manufacturers tech teams know what resistances things are supposed to have and common issues their boilers suffer from, so once you have done all your checks and diagnosed what you think the problem is, ringing the manufacturer to confirm your diagnosis is just due diligence in my eyes. The main boiler manufacturers boilers you can probably diagnose and fix without assistance a lot of the time, but when people have crappy cheap boilers fitted that go wrong, the kind you don't usually see, it is more likely that you won't know the common issues with them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asa Bear Posted April 5, 2013 Report Share Posted April 5, 2013 The main boiler manufacturers boilers you can probably diagnose and fix without assistance a lot of the time, but when people have crappy cheap boilers fitted that go wrong, the kind you don't usually see, it is more likely that you won't know the common issues with them. and when the part required costs more than they paid for the boiler you have one irate customer. Buy cheap, buy twice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Del T Posted April 5, 2013 Report Share Posted April 5, 2013 and when the part required costs more than they paid for the boiler you have one irate customer. Buy cheap, buy twice. So so true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Holliday Posted April 5, 2013 Report Share Posted April 5, 2013 (edited) There are few voices of experience and reason above. I think the public are drip fed this belief that we are all conning bar stools thanks to the likes of that bald headed cockney midget. Yes, there are dodgey plumbers and gas engineers out there but as has been said many times, you get it in every trade or a profession. Show me one where they are whiter than white. Al4x, I can't believe you ar still dining out on that old chestnut, I think it's time you put it to bed. As an aside, is it me or does anyone else think that there are a lot of plumbing & heating enngineers on here? We must be careful or we'll be making a rod for our own backs Edited April 5, 2013 by Doc Holliday Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLuke Posted April 5, 2013 Report Share Posted April 5, 2013 As an aside, is it me or does anyone else think that there are a lot of plumbing & heating enngineers on here? We must be careful or we'll be making a rod for our own backs Only ones that can still afford to shoot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al4x Posted April 5, 2013 Report Share Posted April 5, 2013 Al4x, I can't believe you ar still dining out on that old chestnut, I think it's time you put it to bed. es: It only came up because he got a recommendation on this thread. It's interesting that there are fitters on here who appear to do the same just change things without knowing whether they are faulty or not but change and if it doesn't work change something else. Would make sense to me to keep the old parts and re fit if they didn't fix the problem but then I guess you can't charge for that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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