Oh No..CO..a tale of a near miss..

Pssst · Jan 3, 2015

Xmas week..went to a housing association elderly persons bungalow. The CO detector had started parping late in the evening. The elderly lady was swaddled up in her armchair and the place was decidedly chilly. After some chatter i learned that she had a worcs combi in a bedroom cupboard near the co alarm, and a freestanding cooker. She reported that they came every year to check the appliances and a few months ago because her heating and hot water had stopped working, someone attended and spent best part of the day ripping the boiler apart to find out why it wouldnt fire.

He then called another guy to assist him. The other guy had a look and had said there was no gas coming through. He then apparently went and faffed about with the meter in the outside box and it was now "fixed".

On inspection it was found that
a)the regulator seal was missing
b)there was no valve in the regulator as it had gone awol
c)because of (b), service pressure was entering the property..28mb at the time of checking

Further chat with customer....she said she didnt cook much (think she had meals on wheels type of arrangement),but reported that the flames on the cooker were good and strong since they had fixed it. Thankfully she hadnt used the oven.

Incredible..two baffoons are worse than one..unless ive reconstructed the story incorrectly.

AWheating · Jan 3, 2015

was it a newish reg??

if the reg was old it could have failed internally after it was ajusted?? one of the reasons your supposed to get the grid to adjust these thing is they know which of the old regs are now ID because they fail internally and must be changed on sight.

im sure we have all adjusted one tho, but not to 28mb 🙁

Pssst · Jan 3, 2015

For info, the regulator is a specific model which is known to fail and the valve snaps off. The valve either drops vertically down blocking the reg outlet and resulting on no gas or very low pressure,,or it falls at an angle allowing service pressure through. I suspect in this case, the repairer took meter out to check for gas, the valve fell out and went awol and he stuck meter back in. The snapped valve was neither in the reg body, the meter or the vicinity.