In article ,
Clive George writes:
On 21/10/2013 21:24, Tim Watts wrote:

To all the nay sayers - it seems that there are more specific citations of
card carrying professionals being sloppy and dangerous, than there are DIY
efforts.

Interesting...

It's not entirely surprising. I'd expect the vast majority of gas work
to be done by pros, so one would see many more examples.

I wonder what the proportion of competent vs incompetent DIY is - and of
that latter part, how much is obviously incompetent and how much is
detail where they've tried to do it right but cocked up.

My plumbing anecdote is from our CH install where a friend did the
radiators + pipework and left pipe ends for the stove to be installed.
Cue giggling from the fitters "ah, it'll be crap" - till they looked at
it, at which point they went quiet. Their joints were worse.

When I installed my central heating, I pressure tested each section
of radiator plumbing, similarly to how you check for leaks in gas
pipework. So I knew it had no leaks. Except, when it was all finally
connected together, there was a leak. I had a few sets of full-bore
isolation valves in the system, so I could narrow it down. Eventually
I found it - it was inside the boiler and not in my plumbing at all.
The drain cock leaked where it screwed into a brass casting. Easily
fixed by removal and replacement of the PTFE tape on its thread.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]