Hi All

There was a thread somewhere back up there about self-installing a
Calor gas hob......

A there's been a very faint smell of gas in our kitchen, on & off, for
a few months. The usual 'fairy liquid' testing around the incoming gas
pipe, reducers, couplers failed to show anything. The hob was newly
fitted when we bought the house - 10 months ago.

So - in desperation, I remake all of the joints using (as recommended
by my friendly local "plumbers' suppliers") gas-rated PTFE tape and
their patent sealing liquid.....

result......?

......bother - no improvement......

Finally decided that the (intermittent, very faint) smell was coming
not from the _back_ of the appliance where the connections are made,
but from the front, where the contols are situated....

So - dismantle the hob (gosh - that sealing compound really sticks the
joints up well !) - to discover the most 'Heath-Robinson' arrangement
I've ever seen - where the incoming gas pipe seals against the four
individual burner taps by means of bent bits of metal and little
rubber o-rings - all (sort of) clamped in position and (hopefully)
gas-tight.

Here's where the leak was coming from.... not much scope for fixing
it...

Phoned the manufacturer (Zanussi). Actually quite helpful.... put me
through to 'an engineer', who sounded as if he was sitting in a
service van somewhere out in the wilds.

He confirmed that this 'rubber grommert & three Hail Marys' approach
is fairly standard, told me that the hob was out of guarantee, the
initial callout charge was 70 euro, the replacement parts would have
to be ordered and would cost about 50 euro - and that new hobs cost
about 200 euro.....

Interestingly, he also said to check the regulator on the gas bottle.
This was given to us by the guy we bought the house from about 10
months ago - and (in retrospect) looked a bit second-hand at the time.

Apparently (and this is the purpose of this lengthy post) a frequent
cause of failure / leaking on gas hobs is a failed regulator - which
is allowing too much gas pressure through from the cylinder. This
blows the rubber seals, and you get an intermittent gas leak..

So - we had to go buy a new hob (220 euro) and new regulator (20 euro)
- all because of the old, duff, regulator (free !).......

Lesson learned !

Adrian
West Cork, Ireland

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:12:45 +0100, Adrian
mused:

Phoned the manufacturer (Zanussi). Actually quite helpful.... put me
through to 'an engineer', who sounded as if he was sitting in a
service van somewhere out in the wilds.

He confirmed that this 'rubber grommert & three Hail Marys' approach
is fairly standard, told me that the hob was out of guarantee, the
initial callout charge was 70 euro, the replacement parts would have
to be ordered and would cost about 50 euro - and that new hobs cost
about 200 euro.....

I would have gone a bit mentalist at this point. When someone says
"yeah, it's a bag of ****, not suprised it doesn't work, we're ****ing
useless. Tell you what, give us more than the cost of a new appliance
and we might fix it, or have a look at least" I do tend flip slightly.
--
Regards,
Stuart.

HI Stuart

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:29:45 +0100, Lurch
wrote:

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:12:45 +0100, Adrian
mused:

Phoned the manufacturer (Zanussi). Actually quite helpful.... put me
through to 'an engineer', who sounded as if he was sitting in a
service van somewhere out in the wilds.

He confirmed that this 'rubber grommert & three Hail Marys' approach
is fairly standard, told me that the hob was out of guarantee, the
initial callout charge was 70 euro, the replacement parts would have
to be ordered and would cost about 50 euro - and that new hobs cost
about 200 euro.....

I would have gone a bit mentalist at this point. When someone says
"yeah, it's a bag of ****, not suprised it doesn't work, we're ****ing
useless. Tell you what, give us more than the cost of a new appliance
and we might fix it, or have a look at least" I do tend flip slightly.

g
Yes - well.....
I guess it wasn't Zanussi's fault that the regulator was bu**ered -
and I 'spose that, within the design limits, the 'grommet' approach
works fine...

....don't know why I'm making excuses for them.

The subtle 'wrinkle' was that, even though we've only been using the
hob for 10 months, it was purchased when the house was built, and it
took 18months to sell (not unusual out here) - so it was out of
guarantee before it warmed its first pan of baken beans !

Ah well - all seems OK for now - can breathe again (literally!)

Regards
Adrian

On 3 Aug, 17:41, Adrian wrote:
HI Stuart

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:29:45 +0100, Lurch



wrote:
On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:12:45 +0100, Adrian
mused:

Phoned the manufacturer (Zanussi). Actually quite helpful.... put me
through to 'an engineer', who sounded as if he was sitting in a
service van somewhere out in the wilds.

He confirmed that this 'rubber grommert & three Hail Marys' approach
is fairly standard, told me that the hob was out of guarantee, the
initial callout charge was 70 euro, the replacement parts would have
to be ordered and would cost about 50 euro - and that new hobs cost
about 200 euro.....

I would have gone a bit mentalist at this point. When someone says
"yeah, it's a bag of ****, not suprised it doesn't work, we're ****ing
useless. Tell you what, give us more than the cost of a new appliance
and we might fix it, or have a look at least" I do tend flip slightly.

g
Yes - well.....
I guess it wasn't Zanussi's fault that the regulator was bu**ered -
and I 'spose that, within the design limits, the 'grommet' approach
works fine...

...don't know why I'm making excuses for them.

The subtle 'wrinkle' was that, even though we've only been using the
hob for 10 months, it was purchased when the house was built, and it
took 18months to sell (not unusual out here) - so it was out of
guarantee before it warmed its first pan of baken beans !

Ah well - all seems OK for now - can breathe again (literally!)

Regards
Adrian

I'm not at the position yet that you have found yourself in, but do
have calor gas and correspondingly a regulator on the bottle, which I
suppose at some point may fail presumably gracefully as yours has
done. My question is this - were the burner flames not unduly
large ? or was it that you had no reference point and therefore they
seemed normal.

Rob

HI Rob

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 11:21:35 -0700, robgraham
wrote:

On 3 Aug, 17:41, Adrian wrote:
HI Stuart

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:29:45 +0100, Lurch



wrote:
On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:12:45 +0100, Adrian
mused:

Phoned the manufacturer (Zanussi). Actually quite helpful.... put me
through to 'an engineer', who sounded as if he was sitting in a
service van somewhere out in the wilds.

He confirmed that this 'rubber grommert & three Hail Marys' approach
is fairly standard, told me that the hob was out of guarantee, the
initial callout charge was 70 euro, the replacement parts would have
to be ordered and would cost about 50 euro - and that new hobs cost
about 200 euro.....

I would have gone a bit mentalist at this point. When someone says
"yeah, it's a bag of ****, not suprised it doesn't work, we're ****ing
useless. Tell you what, give us more than the cost of a new appliance
and we might fix it, or have a look at least" I do tend flip slightly.

g
Yes - well.....
I guess it wasn't Zanussi's fault that the regulator was bu**ered -
and I 'spose that, within the design limits, the 'grommet' approach
works fine...

...don't know why I'm making excuses for them.

The subtle 'wrinkle' was that, even though we've only been using the
hob for 10 months, it was purchased when the house was built, and it
took 18months to sell (not unusual out here) - so it was out of
guarantee before it warmed its first pan of baken beans !

Ah well - all seems OK for now - can breathe again (literally!)

Regards
Adrian

I'm not at the position yet that you have found yourself in, but do
have calor gas and correspondingly a regulator on the bottle, which I
suppose at some point may fail presumably gracefully as yours has
done. My question is this - were the burner flames not unduly
large ? or was it that you had no reference point and therefore they
seemed normal.


Well no - the flame height didn't seem to be particularly different
from other Calor-fed hobs that I've installed / used....

....and I don't have the necessary measuring kit to prove or disprove
the theory about the regulator - but I can report that all the new
installation smells of is 'new hob' - which is a very safisfactory
state of affairs.

Thought that the new hob was an exact replacement for the old one -
but as it turns out, they're physically the same (so the old pipework
fitted fine) - but the new one has a 'flame-out' detector and is
subtly different to light - so I guess that's a Good Thing...

Chalk the whole thing down to 'experience' - need to find something
suitably 'satisfying' to do with the old regulator !

Adrian

On Aug 3, 8:53 pm, Adrian wrote:

Chalk the whole thing down to 'experience' - need to find something
suitably 'satisfying' to do with the old regulator !

Test it with a manometer? Maybe there was a tiny pinhole in there.

cheers,
Pete.