On 21/10/2013 14:12, Terry Fields wrote:
Peter Crosland wrote:

On 21/10/2013 11:52, Terry Fields wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:

There was one near me where the guy installed his own bottle gas fired
central heating system. It worked OK for a few weeks and then one
afternoon fortunately with no one at home at 4pm detonated the entire
house and left a blackened roofless shell by the time the fire brigade
arrived. The source of the blaze wasn't hard to figure out. Insurers
said "show us the gas installation certificate" - and then get lost.

Was the certificate requirement a part of the insurance contract?

Mine is silent on the subject.

There is a general presumption in contracts of insurance that you will
take reasonable care to do work properly. Insurers are not keen to pay
out when the insured has been negligent.

That brings us back to the 'competence' problem of not being defined.
Just because a building blows up it doesn't provably mean that
anything about the installation process was incompetent or negligent.
Boilers, etc, carry warranties for this reason.

After I had my previous system installed, a leak developed in the
joint on the supply side of the meter, which the installers hadn't
touched. Buildings blow up for reasons other than lack of competence.

Of course not but that is not the point. Anything burning has an
inherent risk of danger. Explosion is only one of the potential dangers
that can occur by incompetent work. There are far more common risk of
poor combustion is CO poisoning. Do you think it is acceptable to put
people's lives at risk by trying to save a few pounds?

--
Peter Crosland