On 21/10/2013 21:24, Tim Watts wrote:
On Monday 21 October 2013 19:33 Andrew Gabriel wrote in uk.d-i-y:

I had to redo a gas fire installed by Eastern Gas (as was).
It was in a fireplace and replaced a radiant gas fire.
They connected it to the restrictor on the hearth, and it
worked OK whilst they were there. Some time later, I found
that after a long time, it would trip off. The cause was
that when the main burner lit, the gas pressure dropped
and the pilot light was very marginal on the thermocouple.
(It predates oxygen depletion sensors, or that would be
the first suspicion). Anyway, the cause was that there was
too much thin (gaslamp) pipework en route, reducing the gas
pressure. Eventually I replaced the gas pipe from the meter
for other reasons (disconnecting the gaslamp pipework) and
it got a new feed from the new pipework, and worked fine.

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...

Although we are a self selecting group - so its probably less likely
that those who have done poor work will seek out this opportunity to
brag about it ;-)

I also get the impression that "most people" are content with the
mindset that you "can't DIY gas" and hence leave it to the pros, so
there is relatively little DIY work to actually observe, and even when
one is observing it, one may not be aware of its origins.

Of those that will do some work, there is obviously a range of tasks in
what is considered DIYable. I can't see many practical and technically
minded people objecting to replacing a thermocouple on an old boiler, or
brushing / vacuum the crud out of a (traditional) heat exchanger.
However they may stop short of fitting the whole thing or carrying out
more complicated jobs.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/