Rob's Blog

The Internet, in the form of a Facebook campaign, has influenced the pop charts by putting the dead cert for Christmas number 1 X Factor Winner into second place below a classic from rock band Rage Against The Machine.

If Internet people power can upset something as Important as the pop charts, watch out politicians, I say.

I previously wrote about a problem we had selling our flat when British Gas categorised the boiler system as “at risk” because of the concealed flue. We thought we would have to install inspection hatches, so managed to get hold of plans showing the route of the flue. I showed these to a British Gas engineer. He said:

1. A concealed flue should be classified as “not to current standards” rather than “at risk”. He even called the office to check the policy on this.
2. My colleague has been over-zealous by issuing an “at-risk” warning, our guidelines are to warn customers that concealed flues are “not to current standards”.
3. The housing association should not have any trouble selling a property with a “not to current standards” warning. Nearly every property I visit is “not to current standards” for one reason or another.
4. I have never seen a property with flue inspection hatches; I think this would be overkill.
5. I recommend using carbon monoxide detectors.

He has given us paperwork to that effect, and the housing association are happy.

I think the lesson here is plenty of people are confused about concealed flues, so make sure that the people advising you have got their stories straight.

Update: the problem is solved.

Settle in. This is going to be complicated.

It started a few months ago when we had British Gas round to do their annual boiler inspection. They do this as part of their Homecare service. The man inspected the boiler and stuck a label on it saying, “WARNING. You are warned that this gas equipment has been classified as AT RISK. In the interest of safety please DO NOT USE IT until any faults have been remedied. DO NOT REMOVE THIS LABEL.”

He explained that because our boiler is not mounted on an exterior wall, the flue runs through a void above the ceiling. As there is no way to inspect the flue, there is no way he can say that it is safe. So the boiler is not necessarily dangerous, but not necessarily safe either. He said we should get a carbon monoxide detector and went on his way.

Investigating this further, it turns out that the Health and Safety executive issued bulletins 200 and 235. These point out the dangers of concealed flues. What can happen is if the flue gets blocked or breaks, carbon monixide can leak out. The HSE doesn’t seem quite to know what to do about this, besides advising people of the risks and telling builders not to build flats like that any more. It advises residents with this problem to contact the builders of their properties. It advises builders to advise residents to contact gas people. It manages not to say anything very concrete. It does suggest installing inspection hatches so that the flue can be inspected, which is also what the gas man suggested.

Later, we decided to move. We live in a shared ownership flat. We own some of it and a housing association owns the rest. So to sell the flat they get an opportunity to sell it for us first.

On contacting them we explained about the boiler and they said that they could not sell the flat with this problem and we are on our own until it is fixed. It makes me wonder if they are able to re-sell any of their shared ownership flats and whether they even care about this.

We also established that we are solely responsible for any internal repairs. Read the small print if you are ever tempted by a shared ownership deal — words do not necessarily have their usual meanings.

Obviously we need to hire a builder to put hatches in the ceiling. But the gas man said the hatches must be in the right place so that the whole length of the flue can be inspected. So we contacted the builder, as advised by the HSE, to ask for plans to see find out where the flue goes. The builder said that as the building was built a long time ago, the plans are “archived”. This turns out to be a euphemism for “destroyed”.

There’s a possibility the housing association will have plans, but based on their general level of competence it seems unlikely.

Oh, we also contacted the National House Building Council who provide a warranty of sorts for our flat. Because it was built before the HSE issued their new guidelines they can’t help at all. The builders hadn’t done anything wrong at the time. Our real problem is that the HSE changed the rules under our feet.

I think what we really need to do is get the builder and the gas man to visit at the same time and not let them leave until everything is resolved.

In the meantime, we will try to get more information from the housing association. We can’t be the first people in the universe with this problem. Can we? Watch this space.

I quite like the look of CoverItLive, a live blogging application. So I thought I’d try it out. I’ll be waffling on about the F1 qualifying here from 12.15.