"Christian McArdle" wrote in message
t...
Does anybody know if it's legal - or if it affects house insurance -
to plumb in your own gas hob? Or does it have to be done by a Corgi
man?

The general opinion seems to be that it can be done legally by the
homeowner
in many circumstances. However, there are some caveats.

1. You must be competent. This means that things like jointing pipe, leak
detection, pressure testing etc. must be understood and correctly
performed
to the standards expected of a CORGI registered fitter.

2. The house must not be rented out.

3. Rules (such as whether using flexible hoses is acceptable or not) must
be
followed.

4. No payment of any kind can be made.


Add to that a general point - it's a bit of a grey area (and implicitly
recognised as such by CORG1 if you read their warnings carefully - last time
I read it their wording was definitly designed to give the impression that
doing your own gas work is illegal, but they don't actually state it). If
something were to go catastrophically wrong (if for instance the hob
developed a non-fail safe fault that led to loss of life or serious injury)
you might find yourself in the uncomfortable spotlight of an investigation.

In other words, you need to be beyond reproach in your execution of the
job - I would argue that in this context "competence" extends to
understanding of the regs & issues; planning; due regard to such things as
siting, ventilation, test requirements, etc; workmanship; and procedure. It
might be a good idea to record all the tests performed & their results.

There is a website (think it's somewhere on the HSE site) that lists
prosecutions for illegal gas work - I read as many of these as I could stand
a while ago, and did not find a single prosecution for a householder
carrying out their own gas work. They were all either unregistered workmen
carrying out gas-work (explicitly not allowed) or gross incompetence in gas
fitting.

As for the insurance aspect, there's only really one answer - get the policy
terms & conditions and read them very, very carefully, especially any
catch-all clauses.


--
Richard Sampson

mail me at
richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk