Licensed gas fitting
across Marrickville

Do not touch a light switch, a power point or anything else that could spark, and do not start looking for it with a flame. Open the doors and windows on your way through. Turn the gas off at the meter, which is the lever on the pipe, a quarter turn so it sits across the line rather than along it. Then get everyone outside and call from out there. If the smell is strong or you feel unwell, call the emergency line first and us second. Gas moves along cavities and under floors, so where you smell it is often not where it is escaping.

Because almost none of it was original. This housing largely predates domestic gas being run the way we run it now, so the supply was added afterwards, usually decades afterwards. Then it was extended for a new kitchen, capped when a heater went, re-routed when somebody opened the back of the house up. What is behind the wall now is the accumulated record of every one of those decisions, and the paperwork for them rarely survived.

It is the usual situation here and it is workable, but it does change how a job starts. Before we alter anything we establish what is actually there: where the line comes in, where it goes, what is live, what has been capped and whether it was capped properly. That takes a bit of time up front and it is the part that keeps everyone safe. Working off an assumption about where a gas line runs in a house that has been renovated four times is how people get hurt.

In this housing stock, often. When an appliance is removed the line feeding it should be cut back and capped at the source. What actually happened, in a lot of cases, is that it got capped at the visible end and left live behind the plaster. It is fine while nobody touches it. It becomes a problem the day somebody drills a shelf into that wall. If you are renovating, having the redundant runs traced and properly decommissioned is cheap insurance.

Sometimes, and the answer depends on the building rather than the apartment. These were industrial buildings that never had domestic gas, so whatever exists was brought in during the conversion and sized for what the developer planned. Adding a cooktop where none was allowed for can mean a supply that will not carry it, and in strata it also means an owners corporation conversation about common property. Worth establishing before you buy the appliance.

Yes, on every gas job, and you should not accept work without one. A Certificate of Compliance is the licensed fitter's declaration that what was done meets the standard. It is what your insurer will want if there is ever an incident, and what a buyer's conveyancer will ask for. On a housing stock with this much undocumented alteration it is also the only written record the next owner will have. Keep it with the property papers.

A leak test and make-safe is $200 to $450. Connecting a cooktop or a heater to an existing, adequate point is $250 to $550. Running a new point is $450 to $1,200 depending on the distance and what has to be opened up to get there. Tracing and properly decommissioning abandoned runs during a renovation is usually $300 to $700. The compliance certificate is included in all of it, never an extra.