LPG Gas Safety Checks Suffolk

LPG Gas Safety Rules

Living in a rural area has its advantages, like the freedom of countryside and the wild animals roaming around, the disadvantages though is normally, no natural gas supply to your home.

Roughly around 80% of homes in England are connected to the mains natural gas grid, the other 20% use either oil or LPG to cook and heat their homes.

If you are one of the lucky people who live in the countryside, then you will know if you want to cook on gas, the only way would be to have LPG installed.

This would normally consist of 2 LPG gas bottles, a change over valve that the bottles connect to, and a cooking appliance that has been converted to work on LPG.

You could even run your central heating system on LPG, the set up would be a little different, but basically the same.

Having LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) is just like natural gas, the only difference is you store the gas in the garden in bottles or a storage tank.

LPG gas safety is just as important as natural gas.

Always have all your gas appliances checked over and serviced at least once a year, by a registered gas safe engineer.

All gas safe engineers carry a gas safe card with details of what gas and appliances they can work on.

Ask your engineer for his gas safe card and check all the details.

On the front of the card will be a picture of the person in question, an expiry date, which is normally the end of March every year, you should also see a licence number which is raised off the card, this is for people with impaired sight.

Now you have checked the front of the card, turn it over, you will see 2 columns, one for natural gas, and another for LPG, this is the one we are interested in.

Let's say you want your new cooker installed, look on the card for cookers in the LPG section, if you cannot see cookers then the engineer is not registered and cannot work on your cooker.

If any of the details on the card are not correct, you need to ask the engineer to leave your property.

One last check you could do is visit the gas safe register online, and check the engineer's details, this will verify if your engineer is fully registered or not. It's always better to be safe than sorry.

Should you let the engineer carry out the work required, you will leave yourself open for prosecution, punishable with big penalties. The engineer could also be prosecuted and removed from the gas safe register.

Gas Bottles

Most gas suppliers when they deliver your gas will normally change your empty bottles for you, but should you need to change a bottle over yourself it's a simple process.

This is where LPG gas safety comes in.

First, you need to have the correct size spanner to undo the hosepipe connected to the gas bottle.

Depending on what setup you have I would advise switching everything off before attempting to change the bottle, once off, isolate the bottle itself by closing the valve.

Now once everything is switched off you can start to undo the hose connection from the bottle.

Swap your bottle over, tighten the hose and you will be ready to go.

LPG gas safety should always come first, gas in the wrong hands is dangerous.

If you ever have any doubt about one of your gas appliances always isolate it, or switch the gas off completely on the bottles and call in the experts.