YAPH wrote:
On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:58:58 +0000, Arfa Daily wrote:

So what has changed ?

The industry assessment of undersized ventilation. Until about the middle
of last year anything over about half the correct ventilation was OK
(technically "Not to Current Standards") provided the appliance seemed to
be working OK. Now it's got to be spot on (less a few percent allowance
for margin of error). It's not Brutish Gas' decree but the industry
generally, in response (apparently) to an increase in Carbon Monoxide
incidents due to undersized ventilation.


Is this actually true? Despite the widespread availability and, I
assume, use of CO alarms?

Hmmmm....


A review of carbon monoxide incident information,
for 2005/06, produced from the full investigation of
incidents which had resulted from the use of piped
natural gas and LPG, within Great Britain

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report has been written by Advantica as a continuation of the work
established during the Joint Industry Programme (JIP), Addressing Carbon
Monoxide (CO) Issues, within the Incident Data project area. It covers
the period 2005/06. The aim of this work is to identify common causes of
CO incidents related to appliance and system design, installation and
maintenance.

This information can then be used to further improve customer safety, to
target expenditure on CO incident prevention and to identify further
research work. As part of the JIP project, a national data collection
scheme for CO incidents, arising from the use of piped natural gas and
LPG which occur within Great Britain, was established by Advantica. This
was with the support of the HSE and the gas industry. This report
provides information collected via the national data collection scheme
and analysed by Advantica.

This is the tenth report of a series that commenced with the publication
of its first report for incidents that occurred in 1996/97, and it
covers the financial reporting period 2005/06. The incidents are only
described by postcode to ensure anonymity. For the period covered,
details of 15 domestic piped natural gas incidents were submitted to
Advantica, and analysis of this data constitutes the main part of the
report. Details of an LPG incident are included in an appendix of the
report.

The results of the 15 natural gas incidents in the main part of the
report are summarised below:

The number of domestic related CO poisoning deaths reported, at 7 during
2005/06, was the same as last year and equals the lowest recorded since
the DIDR system was introduced in 1996/97.

The over-all FPPY figure of 0.15 x 10-6 is within, what would normally
be considered as, the €œbroadly accepted region€� of HSEs criteria for
the tolerability of risk. However societal concerns over gas safety
override averaged numerical considerations. This also equals the lowest
value recorded since the introduction of the DIDR system.

In variation with previous years, nearly 2/3rd of the incidents included
in this report occurred in owner occupied properties. During 2004/05 the
proportion of incidents between owner occupied and tenanted properties
was almost evenly split.

In contrast with earlier years, terraced properties had a lower
propensity for incidents than other property styles.

The most common room location for casualties was the living room/lounge
followed by the bedroom. Unusually, in 2005/06, more than 50% of
incident appliances were installed in compartments.

The majority of CO incidents involved appliances fitted with open,
individual, natural draught flues.

Central heating appliances were responsible for the majority of fatal
and non-fatal casualties.

The most common incident cause was an appliance fault, the next in order
was a lack of servicing.

Flue and ventilation faults were concurrent in many domestic incidents.

There was 1 LPG incident reported during 2005/06 giving rise to a single
fatality.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr634.pdf

--
Rod

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