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Gas Fire Installations & Repairs
A gas fire is the appliance people worry about least and should worry about most. It sits in a living room, it burns for hours at a time, and it depends on a chimney or flue that nobody looks at. Better Gas install, service and repair gas fires across London, and every fire we touch gets a flue flow and spillage test before we sign it off.
We fit inset fires, outset fires, balanced flue and flueless models, decorative fuel effect fires and gas stoves. Before anything is installed we check the chimney or flue is clear, sound and the right type for the fire you have chosen, that the catchment space below it is adequate, and that the room has the ventilation the appliance needs.
Repairs we are called out to most often: a fire that will not stay alight, a pilot that keeps dropping out, a failed oxygen depletion sensor, broken or crumbling radiants and coals, sooting or black marks above the fire, a fire that has been condemned by another engineer, and fires that were boarded up years ago and now need bringing back into use or capping off properly.
Black marks above a fire, a smell when it is running, or a pilot that keeps going out are all signs of a fire that is not venting properly. Stop using it and call us.
Installing a gas fire the right way
1. Checking the flue type — a class 1 brick chimney, a class 2 pre-fabricated flue, a balanced flue or no flue at all — because it decides which fires you can legally have.
2. Sweeping or having the chimney swept where it is needed, and checking the catchment space below the flue is clear.
3. Confirming the room ventilation and, on older properties, that any air brick has not been blocked up during building work.
4. Fitting the closure plate, the fire and the correct pipework, with an accessible isolation point.
5. A tightness test, a working pressure and gas rate check, and setting the appliance to the manufacturer’s figures.
6. A flue flow test and a spillage test with the fire running — the two checks that prove the products of combustion are actually leaving the building.
7. Handing over the manufacturer’s instructions and our record of the tests we carried out.
If a fire cannot be made safe we will tell you plainly, cap the supply and give you the options in writing rather than leaving you with something you cannot use.
Servicing, Sweeping And Fires Nobody Has Touched For Years
A gas fire should be serviced every year, and most have not been. The two things that go wrong quietly are the flue and the ventilation: a chimney fills with debris over a few winters, or an air brick gets plastered over during a refurbishment, and the fire carries on lighting while it stops venting properly.
A service covers the burner, the injectors, the pilot assembly, the radiants and coals, the oxygen depletion sensor and the flame supervision device, then finishes with a flue flow and spillage test. Chimney sweeping is arranged as part of the same visit where it is needed, so the fire is not left out of use waiting on someone else.
Fires that were boarded up years ago are worth a call either way. Bringing one back into use is straightforward if the flue is sound; capping the supply off properly is straightforward if it is not. What is not safe is a fire left connected and forgotten behind a piece of board.
