I still remember vividly sitting in the kitchen diner in December 2018, surrounded by boxes and furniture piled up in the middle of the room which had come out of storage the day before, watching a Gas Safe engineer checking the boiler and gas hob, before filling in the certificate to say it was safe and signed off. What a relief! At least that all went smoothly - or so I thought...
In fact, things did go smoothly - the radiators came on, there was hot water, the underfloor heating worked and I was cooking with gas!
Then on an unseasonably cold day on 5 June this year - some 18 months after the gas installation had been signed off - I noticed the house felt chilly. There was no heat in the radiators. I checked and did a factory reset on the timer in case that had gone wrong - still no heat. I then did the same with the boiler, and still no heat, although the boiler was firing up and producing hot water.
Puzzled, I searched online on the Worcester Bosch website to find a trouble shooting guide for the boiler. I didn't find the answer to my question but I did notice two things: firstly, the person who installed the boiler should have registered the installation with the manufacturer to validate the guarantee. I had no details to confirm that the installation had been registered. Secondly, combi boilers installed after April 2018 (like mine) had to meet new "Boiler Plus" regulations. This involved having at least one item from the following list provided as part of the installation:
- weather compensation
- load compensation
- heat recovery system
- smart thermostat
My boiler had none of these, so did not comply with Building Regulations. I emailed the man in charge to let him know what had happened; asked for registration details so I could get the boiler fixed under guarantee, and drew his attention to the Boiler Plus requirements, suggesting that the easiest way forward would be to install a Smart thermostat. No reply.
The next day, when trying to check the temperature I noticed that the screen on the little portable room thermostat was blank. I replaced the batteries and - hey presto - the radiators sprang back into life. Problem solved! I emailed the builder again to give him the good news that the boiler wasn't bust, but reiterated the request for registration details to activate the guarantee and my suggestion as to how to make the boiler Building Regs compliant. No reply. I chased up again by emails on 21 July and 10 August. Still no reply.
However, in the meantime, out of the blue, a letter arrived addressed to a Mr Singh at my address, sent from Gas Safe with a Building Regulations Compliance Certificate dated 23 July 2020. Puzzled, I phoned Gas Safe to find out why it had been sent so long after the installation and query why it was certified Building Regs Compliant when the installation didn't include any items from the Boiler Plus requirements check list. The man I spoke to suggested that a further inspection be carried out by one of the Gas Safe Inspectors, and I agreed.
The inspection took place on 25 August 2020. It found that not only did the boiler installation fail to meet Boiler Plus requirements, the installation was defective in so far as the diameter of the condensate pipe was too small and should have been insulated where it ran outside the building.
Most worrying of all, a gas tap installed in the original fireplace at my request (in case I wanted to connect up a gas fired stove at some point in the future) had not been properly sealed and capped off pending a future connection. As soon as the tap was opened, gas poured into the room. Whoever installed it had filled the pipe with a dollop of silicone, which was totally ineffective at preventing gas escape should the tap have been accidentally knocked open. I thought of all those times we had eaten in that room by candlelight and might have been blown up had gas escaped into the room by accident. Horror of horrors!
The Gas Safe Inspector fixed it there and then as it was a major safety issue. He was not impressed...
I alerted the builder straight away by email and forwarded the Gas Safe report as soon as it arrived on 27 August, confirming all the points set out above. The firm which did the gas installation was required by Gas Safe to fix the problems by 10 September or else...
...They eventually turned up on 9 September. Although they brought with them a Smart thermostat, they didn't have the electrical expertise to fit it, so took it away with them. They failed to bring a new pipe of the right diameter size to replace the wrong size pipe they had installed, so had to go off to the local builders merchant to pick up a length of the right size. They also tried to fob me off with a bit of foam pipe insulation only suitable for internal work, rather than something water proof, rat proof and UV resistant which is required outside and had to be ordered from a specialist supplier. By the time they left, the condensate pipe had been replaced, but not insulated and there was still no smart thermostat to make the installation Building Regs Compliant.
The man in charge eventually came back to me on 10 September confirming, amongst other things, that they would fit a Smart programmer to meet the boiler plus requirements, but they never turned up to fit it before relations broke down completely as the deadline for finishing the works came and went on 7 October.
I sourced and fitted the external pipe insulation myself and a Trading Standards approved plumber will be coming to install the Smart thermostat next week along with other plumbing jobs which the builder agreed to carry out but never got round to doing by the deadline. I still don't have the registration documents for the boiler installation but the guarantee runs out in December and I've just had the boiler serviced, so hopefully it won't go wrong in the foreseeable future. And we didn't have a gas explosion from the uncapped tap (and won't now) so at least that's something to be grateful for!
The irony is that had it not been for the batteries running out in the room thermostat and my research online trying to find out how to fix what I thought was a broken boiler, none of this would have come to light. I would have remained in blissful ignorance of the gas installation defects and non-compliance issue...or the house might have been blown up in a gas explosion and I wouldn't be here writing this blog...
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