An Ex-Gas Safe Inspector Answers YOUR Questions w/ Terry Sawyer

Too many people wing it, and that's quite a big problem. Too many people just know how to fit a boiler. They don't check the gas pressures, they don't do anything like that. They just fit the boiler, make up the readings, and then they go, they get paid. And unfortunately, that's where issues come back and bite them in the arse. This is where a lot of people get it wrong. If you haven't got your— let's say you haven't got your fires qualification, you still have a duty of care when you walk into a property. If you walk past a room and there's a fire in that room, you're there to look at the boiler. Whatever, you walk past that room and you see the fire's got signs of spillage, you still have a duty of care to make that customer aware they've got a dangerous appliance. Is there a deeper answer to that? Well, no, there isn't. Sometimes it is just a case of, can you leave an open-ended gas pipe? Well, no, of course you can't, you know. So, so it really sometimes is just to see if, if you, if engineers are overthinking it.

This is the Gas Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Tarek Priest, and today I'm joined by Terry Sawyer. From inspecting installations across London to guiding engineers through inspections, Terry is highly experienced gas engineer with over 15 years on the tools and also a former GasSafe inspector. Welcome to the show, Terry.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

In the very first episode we did with Terry, we got a lot of questions from our viewers about the ins and outs of GasSafe inspection process, and in today's episode we'll be running through the, um, the questions and answering them. Somebody wanted to know, are inspections only administrated if there has been a complaint, or are there other reasons a GasSafe might schedule a visit?

Yeah, no, there's no— no. So every business needs to be inspected, ideally once every 5 years. Some people say, I haven't had one for 10 years, then you're lucky, basically. So, um, yeah, every business needs to be inspected. First of all, when they're probationary, so when they first register with GasSafe, they get an inspection. To make sure they're good enough to carry on without any additional training. But then, yeah, once— so I've had over the years, I've had maybe 3 inspections, one of them being a group one in the hotel room and the others being face to face. So generally that's what you should expect. You should expect if you work for a company, if you are an engineer on a company working on the company's registration, Some people have never had an inspection because normally the company send their best engineer for obvious reasons.

The company can choose which engineer.

If they all work under that GasSafe number, it's the GasSafe registration number that's being inspected, not the engineer. So some engineers who have worked for someone else for a long time, they've probably never had an inspection.

But if you're a sole trader, obviously it will come up a lot more.

You would have had one. Yeah.

On TikTok, a commenter asked if you turn up to a job another gas engineer has been inspected, can the inspector also audit you, or are they strictly there to assess the person they originally came for?

Yeah, there's no reason, there's no reason why an inspector would inspect more than one business. I mean, if you had, I mean, if you approached an inspector and said, oh look, I'm here as well, you know, can I do an inspection? I'm sure they wouldn't say no, because if you've got 2 engineers in one place and they're doing inspection, you might find an inspector says, yeah, we can do it. You can do it at the same time because it all helps get these inspections, get them done. The more inspections you get done, the better it is for Gas Safe and HSE to make sure that all engineers are up to scratch, basically. But generally, an inspector won't see you on site, pull you over and go, right, I'm doing your inspection as well today.

Yeah. And Dave is curious to know, how many registrations do GasSafe actually remove on average per year?

How many per year? I don't know the exact number. I wouldn't know. But I would like to say, I think what people are worried about is how many they get rid of for dodgy gas work, things like that. You're more likely to lose your registration because either you don't do gas work anymore or you can't be inspected for whatever reason. So if there's any reason why, you know, you won't be able to attend inspections, then Gas Safe will remove your registration or suspend it temporarily until you are able to be inspected. But as I've said on previous, you know, previous podcasts, that the likelihood of having your Gas Safe registration removed because of something you've done is not as likely as what you may think. It's more to do with GasSafe then providing a way for you to get it, get it back, basically. So for whatever you've done, GasSafe will come up with a plan to get you, get you back working under your registration, whatever that might be— extra training, they, you know. And if you refuse, then obviously your, your registration is going to be suspended. But yeah, it's not, it's not something that happens you know, really often for serious reasons. Hi, Producer Alex here, wondering if you knew that you aren't subscribed to the channel. More specifically, 93% of you are not subscribed, and we really appreciate you tuning in right now, but you're missing out on even more interesting content. You're already this far into the episode, so why not subscribe to the Gas Engineers Software YouTube channel? Because showing your support genuinely makes a difference. It's free, takes a second to click, and helps us continue to make the content that you want to listen to. Speaking of, let's get back to it.

Somebody wonders if Gas Safe needs to carry out more inspections on new builds. In his experience in London, flue locations near openings or vents have been a frequent problem they've noticed.

Yeah, so the problem is obviously Gas Safe don't obviously don't inspect properties. They don't go out and do inspections on properties as such. Gas Safe Register are obviously inspecting individuals carrying out the work. So all I would say to anyone that comes across anything like that, that they, they, if you, they have a concern or they're seeing it's a regular occurrence, these issues, they're not going to get highlighted to GasSafe unless they call GasSafe. Now, an engineer can call GasSafe and raise a concern if they are finding someone is installing these, these appliances not to manufacturer instructions, not to building regs. So an engineer, if they are finding this, they can request that inspection is carried out on these properties. That is probably the best thing they can do because then Gas Safe will be made aware of it. So unless Gas Safe are made aware of it, they're not going to start randomly picking buildings and estates to be inspected, basically, because it's— Gas Safe's inspections aren't aimed at individual engineers.

Okay, so this comes back to your earlier point about it is for the business. And I would imagine something like, say, British Gas, I'm guessing they would have— would they have more inspections or is it still the same? They just have one engineer tested?

No. So British Gas fall under large business. So they actually, because they have so many engineers, they fall under the large business inspections. So that's a very, very different, more in-depth inspection. But what they tend to do, companies like British Gas, because they've got so many engineers, they would normally have group inspections, a bit like what GasSafe do with, you know, in the hotel room, conference room, where they have 100 engineers. That would be very similar to how British Gas have their inspections, but because they come under the large business inspections, it's done a different way to small business. Yeah.

So how— what size do you have to be to become a large business?

10 engineers or more. 10 engineers or more. You're then looked after by large business inspection. So yeah, anyone below that, you'd still fall under the ordinary. So there's a lot more rules, a lot more things come into play when you are a large business in terms of gaso. A lot more things have to be inspected. So inspections normally take all day and most of the large business inspectors only work, they're only out doing inspections 3 days a week because the other 2 days they're needed for admin. There's a lot more paperwork involved with inspecting a large business.

This is kind of going back to the idea of checking properties. Peter Reid feels that many council boiler installation jobs aren't being checked, so he wants to understand why so many poor quality installations are getting signed off or missed entirely.

So again, this comes down to, this comes down to unless it's highlighted to GasSafe. GasSafe are not going to start inspecting they're not going to start inspecting random council installations. So unless the tenant themselves, the council tenant, unless they complain to GasSafe, which a lot of them do make complaints, but they generally don't complain to GasSafe, they complain to the council. The council aren't going to ring GasSafe and complain about one of their own engineers. So unless an engineer does highlight it to GasSafe or the tenant themselves, GasSafe are not going to be aware of these installations and how poor they are. I mean, I do hear some horror stories from different councils, you know, the boilers they do. But unless someone actually flags it to GasSafe, nothing will be done about it, unfortunately.

This is a little bit of a tangent, and I don't know whether it'd be possible, but what's your opinion about focusing on just the business as opposed to the actual properties themselves?

I think the issue is if you focus on the business or the engineers, obviously you are inspecting how the work is being done, their work. But an engineer is never going to take you, a business, whoever, whatever inspection is never going to take you to a job they've done that was really bad. That's my only criticism. They will always take you to one of their best jobs or a job they know is quite good.

So they can choose the location.

They tell you where the inspection is. Yeah. So you say to them, we need to see 2 properties or 2 different locations to do an inspection. Generally, they're not going to take you to a bad one. That's what you'd hope. So the problem is bad installations don't get highlighted to GasSafe unless someone actually tells GasSafe, I think that's dangerous, or I think there's a lot of issues with that, or I've got concerns of that appliance.

But if you're a layperson, you're not going to know that the flue is too close to the bedroom window.

No, exactly. No, no, no, no, no, exactly. No, you're not gonna— so, so that's where, that's where if another engineer highlights it, like they have done on these comments, that's where an engineer can highlight it to GasSafe. An engineer, if an engineer has any concerns over work that's been done, they can make GasSafe aware. It's not— they're not, they're not, um, you know, they're not going out their way to badmouth another business.

If you've got a legitimate concern, like a safety concern about the safety of, of the occupants.

Yeah, and if you know it's a new build or it's been done more recent, then, you know, obviously then it's much more likely that that needs to be looked at by Gas Safe. If it's, you know, if it's a house that's been done, you know, boiler was done 15 years ago and the flue's too close to a window, well, generally it's not going to be as common. But if you've got a new build site and they're going out and they're starting to put flues too close to opening windows, or any kind of opening, and, you know, within the manufacturer's what the manufacturer state is, the minimum distances, the minimum flue distance according to, you know, to GasSafe, you know, if it's within that, then yeah, obviously that can be, it's gotta be flagged up by someone, you know. And if you are an engineer seeing it, then you are well within your right to say to GasSafe, you know, there's a lot of flues too close and they're all new, you know. And then GasSafe will look into it.

What about that focus on, well, I guess there's two possible options. One is that the businesses don't actually choose which location. They've done a number of gas certificates through the year, could be chosen at random. Yeah, but I do understand there's access issues, there's, you know, other challenges there. Or the other option is to do more of a property kind of based as opposed to a business based.

I think the property side of things, I think, is difficult because you could inspect a property and it might have been fitted by a registered gas engineer 5 years ago, they may no longer have their registration, or they may have set up a new one. Now, unfortunately, that means any work that was carried out on their old registration is basically untouchable. Now, you know, GasSafe can't do anything about it, which—

yeah, how common is that for people to—

no, not very common, because people like to keep, you know, people like to keep their registration. Their registration number, for people in the know, generally, you know, shows people how long they've been qualified for. So the Gas Safe registration is nice to have. It's nice to hold on to because you had that. And plus, if you've got your van sign written, your uniform sign written, your Gas Safe number, you don't want to be changing your number every 5 minutes.

No, definitely not.

And generally, yeah, I mean, it will get flagged up to Gas Safe as well if you are, for whatever reason, cancelling your registration, setting up a new one. If you're doing that sort of often, then it will get flagged up to GasSafe and they'll probably start looking into why.

Mark wants to know that you're a good guy and also raise concerns about Centria, the parent company of British Gas, being in charge of GasSafe, suggesting it could be a conflict of interest.

Yeah. So I think this is just people getting their wires crossed here. So it's not— it's nice the fact that he thinks I'm a good guy. So that's good. It's always a good start.

Yeah. You're doing well.

Centrica does own British Gas, but Centrica does not— is not in charge of Gas Safe. Gas Safe is a parent company. Obviously the HSE are in charge of Gas Safe, effectively, but the parent company of Gas Safe is Capita. Capita don't have any direct links with any other gas businesses as far as I'm aware. They are a very big company and they've got their fingers in a lot of pies, but they are the the overall company that owns, that owns GasSafe. So I think that people have just got their wires crossed with two companies that sound similar. But yeah, British Gas don't have anything to do with GasSafe, so there's no, no conflicts of interest.

With regards to technical standards and grey areas, we have from some engineers that they prefer to duplicate the previous year's certificate and just make a few adjustments needed. From GasSafe's point of view, is that acceptable practice, or should each inspection be treated as if you're testing the appliance from scratch? I'm not sure whether this is just talking about the documentation or the actual physical, the actual inspection.

Well, I mean, any gas inspection, you've got to test every appliance because an appliance can change from year to year. It can become unsafe at any point between the last inspection and the next inspection. So you've got to, from Gas Safe's point of view, and I think from most engineers' point of view as well, they'd all probably say the same thing as me, that you've got to test if you're testing an appliance. You're doing a gas safety inspection as if it's the first time you've done it. You know, you've got to test the appliance, you've got to test the gas, you've got to do, you've got to do all, you've got to run through your same checks because you're basically signing it off to say it's safe, safe to use. So, and things can go wrong, you know, obviously within a year. So yeah, with that one, I'm not really sure you could sort of, you know, make a few adjustments to last year's certificate. You're basically doing a new one as if it's, you know, as if it's a brand new inspection. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it any other way. Basically, because you're not inspecting it. If you're just making a few adjustments on, you know, on the paperwork, you generally, yeah, you're not really, you're not inspecting it.

A commenter thinks that the flue integrity is great for fan-flued appliances, but wants to know about open flue.

Yeah, so I think this person's got slightly wrong to stick with it. So flue integrity is just testing the air in. So it's just testing the air in from the outside to the appliance via the flue, via a twin flue, obviously, the, the outer part of the flue. So you're testing that there's no breaks in the seals, no damaged seals on the way out, basically. So it's not mixing any dirty air with clean air on the way back in. So on an open flue, the, the air is taken from the room anyway, so you wouldn't be able to do a flue integrity test on an open flue appliance because it's not taking its air from the outside, it's taking it from the room. So just your standard checks that you would do, your flue flow, checking everything on, and your spillage and stuff like that. You're doing your normal, normal multitests on the flue. That's the only way you'd be able to do an open flue. There's no flue integrity check on an open flue because you can't do a flue integrity check on a sealed, on a room-sealed appliance if the case is off. If the case is off and it's pulling in air from the room, well, you can't do a flue integrity test anyway because it's taking its air from the room. You're not pulling air down from the outside through the flue. So yeah, so on open flues you couldn't do it. You can't do, you can't test for oxygen, you know, on the intake on an open-flued appliance.

Another one's to know about sealing gas pipes that pass through walls. Some seal internally only, some externally, many seal both on both sides. What's the correct method?

So I was actually talking to someone else about this yesterday, funnily enough. So from, again, I might be incorrect in my view on this, but I've always known it and even when I was inspecting. So if it's a pipe If it's a pipe internally in the house, it's running through a wall and it's just been sleeved, well, there's no real need to seal it. What you're normally, when you're sealing it, you're sealing it to the structure. So if you ever get a leak inside, you seal it internally. So if you ever get a leak inside, inside the wall, the gas goes to the outside, it's allowed to get out. If you seal it externally and it gets a leak, well, you're gonna send gas into the house. So from, yeah, if it's passing through, so if it's the outside to in, then you'd always seal it on the inside so the gas went out. Basically, if it ever leaked inside the sleeving. But internally, there's no real need to seal anything internally because it's going to leak. If it's going to leak, it's sleeving internally for an internal wall is mainly to protect the pipe from corrosion, damage, things like that.

A YouTuber said that you mentioned how some questions during an inspection can seem like a trick question, like asking whether it's safe to leave a gas pipe open. Are inspectors trying to test deeper knowledge, or do engineers some Just sometimes just overthink it.

Yeah, I think there are trick questions, but they're not— well, they may seem like trick questions, but they're not trick questions. I think it is to see if you overthink something that has a very simple answer. So it's just not to test deeper knowledge as such, but just to test whether, again, the most basic answer. Sometimes the answers are very basic, but it's very easy to overthink every question you get because you're being inspected. Is there a deeper meaning to that? Is there a deeper answer to that? Well, no, there isn't. Sometimes it is just a case of can you leave an open-ended gas pipe? Well, no, of course you can't. Leaving an open-ended gas pipe and someone complaining about it to GasSafe will result in an inspection, 100%.

So if there's a basic answer, just go with the basic answer.

Sometimes it is just a basic answer that yeah, that you need, you know. And that's again, that's where if you look at unsafe situations, what is unsafe situations about an open-ended gas pipe? Well, it's going to say it's immediately dangerous, turn it off, you know, cap it, you know, that sort of thing. So it really sometimes is just to see if engineers are overthinking it.

Okay. Talking about at risk and immediately dangerous, Paul Kramer asks, please explain why there is not an option when AR is categorized for an appliance to be left connected as the customer refused to allow disconnection?

I think it just makes it too complicated to add another. So obviously an AR, you don't need to disconnect anyway. An AR, you don't need to disconnect. If a customer is going to turn the appliance back on when you leave, they're allowed to do that. It's an at-risk, you know, if it's definitely an at-risk and you've categorized it correctly, then I just say to the customer, look, I advise you not to use this. I've categorised it at risk because it has the potential to be dangerous.

Right.

That's what the whole point of an at-risk categorisation. Right. So I would say to them, I'm going to turn the appliance off from the front of the boiler or from a fuse spur or whatever. If you choose to turn it back on, you can. Right. As long as my paperwork says that I've at-risked it and I've turn the appliance off, then that's all. As a gas engineer, that's all you need to do. I've left my warning notice on it. If they decide to peel it off when I've left, well, that's up to them. You know, I've left my— I normally put a warning notice on. I normally take a photo, right, to show that I've put that warning notice. I've put my label on, I've filled out a warning notice, I've left that at the property as well. If that customer decides to rip it up, well, that's fine. I've still got a copy, right? So, and I've got my photos to go with it. So I see what they're saying. Why is there not a box to tick to say, you know, customers refused? Disconnect. Well, it doesn't have to be disconnected, so it would never say that anyway, but the customer could decide to keep it on. It's only at risk, so that's actually well within their rights to leave it on. I would often make a note on the cert just to say customer decided they wanted it left on. I had turned it off, customer turned it back on, something like that. As long as you've covered your back.

Okay, so, so you're basically saying that as long as the warning notice says that you switched it off, uh, you've— it's obviously a warning notice, stuck it on there, etc. So the last time you touched it It was off.

Yeah, that's it.

And then it's the customer that actually switched it on. And I'm guessing you could put in the comments box, you know, advise customer that it's at risk, etc.

That's it. And normally, like I say, again, normally, I mean, you're talking about, you're talking about your difficult customers, which is rare. Most customers, as soon as they hear that there is some kind of safety issue with that appliance, they will normally want it fixed. Or want it dealt with. They don't want an appliance that has the potential to become immediately dangerous. Yeah, they don't want, they don't want that generally. So it's rare, but if it's at risk, as long as you've done, as long as the engineer has done everything they can do and followed the rules, it's how they've done, you know, and got their evidence, got their photos, let them turn it back on if that's up to them. You know, you don't need to specify they wouldn't let you turn it off. If it's immediately dangerous, it's a different story, right? If it's an ID appliance and the customer refuses to turn it off, cap it off, isolate it, and they normally end up, that would normally follow with get out my house, right? That's fine. Engineers are told, okay, it's not your problem anymore, it's Cadent's problem. You know, call Cadent, let Cadent come out and explain to them that they've got a dangerous appliance. And it will end up, if it's ID, that means it could, it's potentially going to kill someone, you know, running, it's going to kill someone. So Cadent will come out and Cadent normally has a nice chat with them and normally says, look, you need to have that isolated, otherwise we're going to be digging the street up and capping off your gas from the outside. And it normally, then the bill for all of that normally falls on the So once they've had that nice chat with Cadent, Cadent normally convince them to have their appliance made safe. And that's all. Yeah. Again, if you're an engineer and that instance it happens, that's different. You make sure that's written all over your paperwork. And if you have to slide that paperwork through their front door and they've kicked you out the house, then that's, yeah, that's what you have to do.

Okay. And just to cover yourself, you have a picture sliding it under the door or something?

Basically, just, yeah. I mean, you could even stay outside and wait for Cadent to turn up because you're going to explain to Cadent exactly what you found and the fact that it's ID and the fact that the customer's refused. So you, and, and obviously any Cadent phone calls will come with a Cadent reference number, so you make sure you note all that down.

Last two questions. Muhammad, who was really eager to have you back on, asks, can an inspector ask questions about an appliance or appliances that aren't the ones that you're actually currently working on? And what's the reason behind those kind of questions, generally speaking?

So again, this goes back to what qualifications you've got. So if you are doing an inspection, most of the time we would ask to see someone do tests on a boiler. The boiler is what we would, you know, that's what we're going to look at, that's what they're going to be, we're going to be testing and they're going to be showing us practically. But if you've got qualifications in your fires and your cookers and things like that, then you will be asked questions as part of the technical assessment of that of that, of your inspection, the technical part. So yes, if you have got them qualifications, you generally won't be asked questions on them appliances. If you don't have that qualification, you may be asked questions on ventilation and things for them type of appliances because that's part of your core gas. That isn't a qualification on that appliance in particular. You still have to learn about a lot of these things. So if you walk into a property, this is where a lot of people get it wrong. If you haven't got your, let's say you haven't got your fires qualification. You still have a duty of care when you walk into a property. If you walk past a room and there's a fire in that room, you're there to look at the boiler, whatever. You walk past that room and you see the fire's got signs of spillage, or you see that, yeah, there's no ventilation. You still have a duty of care to make that customer aware they've got a dangerous appliance.

So when you say walk past, are you classifying it as like a visual inspection or If you walk the pork past the lounge in the hallway, there was an open door. Are you actually going into the lounge to look at it or are you just like, how does—

because it's a bit of a grey area. Again, it is a grey area because you can't start walking around someone's house. Normally I would say if you're there to do what you're working in the property as a gas engineer, you have a duty of care for every gas appliance if you think it's unsafe. And part of your core gas training is that you have been trained on the basics, the basic regulations, the basic safety issues. Is there ventilation for that fire? Is there enough ventilation? Oh, it's a DFE fire. Right. Okay. What's the minimum? There's no vent in there at all. We know it needs a minimum vent. We know it must have. That's not in there. So you can make them aware. You can still label it up as dangerous. You can say to them, that's not safe. Now, you might not have the qualification, but you can still say to them, look, I don't think that's safe. And you can still do the appropriate paperwork for it just on a visual side of things. They might turn around and go, we don't use that. We've not used that. We've never used that since we moved in. You can say to them, fine, are you happy with me isolating it then? If you're happy with me isolating it, I've made it safe because it doesn't look safe. And if they want to go into further detail, they can get someone who does have their qualifications in fires or whatever appliance it happens to be to come around and make it safe. It might just need an air vent put in, it might need a service, that sort of thing. Okay, so you can't ignore it, but you're not going to start walking around someone's house opening doors. I just want to see what appliances you've got. If you're doing a Gas Safe inspection and you're there to test every appliance in the property, then you do need to be a bit more— I need to look at what appliances you've got. Because if you went into a property, said to the tenant, oh, what gas appliances you got? And they've got a cooker and a boiler. You go and test them and leave and you've missed that there was a fire in the front room because most people forget that they've got fires. Then you've missed a gas appliance, basically. So you need to— it's difficult because again, you're not going to start walking around someone's house letting yourself into rooms, but you just need to make sure that they are aware you need to see every gas appliance, even if you have to explain to them Have you got any fires anywhere? Any of these rooms got fires in them? Rather than just taking their word for it, because there's nothing worse than leaving a property and not having tested a fire.

So would that still apply? Let's say it's a tenanted property and you were employed just to do the boiler. And what happens if you weren't aware the door was closed, you didn't see the fire?

Chances are, I mean, I've had that happen many years ago now. The reason the tenants didn't tell me was because they were using the room as a bedroom, so they was trying to keep it. Because they'd turned this room into a bedroom. So they didn't want anyone in there to see it was a bedroom.

So I had to let the landlord know. Exactly.

Yeah. And the problem with that, that they turned it into a bedroom, it changes the rules on what fire can be in there, what size fire, what safety devices the fire needs to have. So I, yeah, I was told they only had 2 gas appliances in there. When I left, I actually left, the landlord called me and said, oh, I forgot to mention the fire in the front room. I said, that's weird because the tenants didn't tell me there was a fire in the front room. And obviously the doors were locked because they was using it as a bedroom. So I said, I'm not going to start walking around I'll ask the tenants, well, what appliances have you got? Have you got fires in here? No, no. So I went back and said, oh, it turns out you have got a fire. And they went, oh. And then all of a sudden they remembered. So I went and tested it, but because they've turned it into a bedroom, the fire ended up being capped off by the landlord's request. So because the fire needs to have certain— now it changes. If that was a living room or a dining room, the fire would've been fine. But because it's now a sleeping area, the fire requires an ASD safety device and it didn't have one 'cause it was so old. So now because these tenants have turned it into a bedroom, it now becomes safety issue.

That's tricky.

Yeah, it's tricky because you can't start walking around someone's house. But you need to be aware that if you do a gas safety inspection on a property and there is a fire there, and that fire then goes on to have a safety issue which ends up putting someone in hospital or even worse, killing someone, your gas safety certificate means nothing. Basically, you didn't do the gas safety inspection correctly. And although you can turn around and say, yeah, but they never told me. You know, the problem is, as a gas engineer, your job is to make sure that that property is safe. Everything gas in that property is safe. And if you've only done half the job, well, then missing stuff that's potentially dangerous can obviously have horrible, horrible consequences.

Have extra consequences. Okay, last question from Muhammad. Do you recommend the Viper book, or are there other sources you think engineers should revise from?

All right, so the Viper books are good, you know, the Viper books certainly are a good book to have. On hand. But I mean, we don't— I don't recommend any, any book in particular. I think they all do the same thing. They all contain the same information. If you've got a book and it doesn't have the information, then it isn't the right book to have on your van, basically. But most of these books, these Viper books, that sort of stuff, most of them you get will have pretty much the same information that you need if an inspector asks a question. So the main thing with these is If you don't know an answer to a question an inspector asks you, can you open your book and find it? If the answer is no, because it's not in there, then you haven't got the right books because the questions you will be asked will be absolute basic bread and butter gas engineer questions. There is nothing in there. There are no questions that you would never have heard the answer to, basically. So yes, Jeremy.

But in reality, most of these books have everything covered.

Most of them. I don't think— I mean, any book that I've ever had, I've been able to find the answer to it. And to be honest, these days, you know, a lot of questions, a lot of questions, they're safety questions. A lot of the time it's safety questions. Well, safety questions, you can download the GasSafe Unsafe Situations or PDF in about 30 seconds off the internet, right? The unsafe situations generally will answer any question you've got on a safety point of view. On a point of view in terms of ventilation questions or anything along them lines, then the Viper Books, any books like that, will have have the same information in there, you know, generally. And if it hasn't, then you haven't got the right book. So I think they're all pretty good, to be honest. They've all got the information.

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I mean, I still get a lot of phone calls off of friends and stuff. Even, even the guy that trained me up, he still rings me a lot of the time. He sends me photos from what one of his engineers have sent him saying, is this allowed? You know, is this allowed? Is this, is this okay? Is this a part? Is this— and so I'm still— yeah, I still— it's, it's, it's, it's strange because I'm far from— I far from know everything. I'm far from there's a lot of stuff I don't know. I still ring, you know, I still ring my old ex-colleagues and stuff. There's a lot of stuff I still don't know. And no engineer will know everything.

But what comes across is there's quite a lot of nuance. There's quite a lot of just, you know, okay, it's a boiler, it's heating, but there's just small, you know, like, yeah, each case is just slightly—

Everything changes. There's so many little— and sometimes it does come down to engineer judgment. Engineer judgment. If you ring GasSafe for advice, they will normally say, I'm not there, you are. Right. And normally with their sort of regulation help, you can answer your own questions normally.

Okay. So they don't give you the answer. It's just—

No, not often. They're there to— I mean, like you said, little things can change and that's what catches engineers out. Fit in a boiler and the flue coming out and it's more than 300 from a window. So that's— it's got to be 300 away from a window or an opening door. Now if it's underneath a little walkway or a little balcony or something, that 300 changes to 1,200. So now it's got to be a lot further away. Little things like that you're not expected to know. You're expected to remember the 300 because the 300 rule is the one you're looking for most of the time. I wasn't aware until I looked at the manufacturer. I rang GasSafe, just said, just double check with me, this, it's got to be 1200. He went, yeah. He said, you're there, I'm not. He said, but yeah, 1200. So little things like that.

But you need to be aware that, okay, there's an overhang. Okay, there's a change. We need to, yes, we need to think about this.

We need to think about distances. And so, so the engineer who fitted that boiler, it wasn't very old. He went, his argument was it's more than 300 away. So I had to go back and say to him, yeah, but it's got to be 1200 because it's under a walkway. And he was like, I had no idea. So these little things, I mean, that's what I mean. I'll ring Gas Safe just to double-check sometimes. So I know the answer, I just want to— yeah, I just want to speak to them just to hear what their point of view. But sometimes their point of view will change, will change my point of view, or they'll turn around and say, well, what's the issue? And I'll say, well, this is the issue. And they say, is it? Is it an issue? So now it's like it's become Things are changing week in, week out. That's the hard bit, how quickly things change. I've been failing gas. I've still got friends that fail gas safety inspections on if there's an opening window in a kitchen, because if there isn't, it says in the book you can't have a cooker in there. But actually, that's nothing to do with Gas Safe. The opening window is a building regulation. Yeah. So there's little things like that where I still get phone calls saying, oh, there's no opening windows. That means it's failed a gas safety. I said no. The opening window has nothing to do with GasSafe. The opening window is to do with moisture and heat buildup. It's a building regulation. So he said, well, why do they drum it into you at training school then? I said, because they don't know either. I said, they don't know. It's not anything to do with gas safety. It's to do with building regulations. I only found that out working for GasSafe. So I've failed. I've done it for years. I've gone, na fouls, there's no opening window in here. Grey areas where I've still got friends now and I still say to them, that can't foul a gas safety because there's no window, you know, because it's been drummed into them the wrong way, you know.

So there's lots of things because you have to, you got to unlearn it and then relearn it again.

Yeah, you have. Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's why it gets drummed. It's distances and stuff like that from flues and that, that's what catches a lot of people out, you know, where they've just not thought it through when they've done a boiler and it can end up causing an inspection for no real reason. You knew you had to put a plume kit on it or something to change the flue. But yeah, it's little things like that. But if I can help people and they don't worry too much about— I say, I'm not an encyclopedia on gas stuff. I still ring up for questions all the time. If I'm stuck, I don't know all the regulations. I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff I don't know still. But if I can—

Yeah, it's one of those funny things though. You know that you don't know. Sometimes you know, with it, with the overhang.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't know. Yeah, I knew there was an issue, but I didn't know how far it had to be. And it was Gas Safe. We were quite happy to answer that, you know, and they have a chat with you about it, you know. And that's the, and that's the thing, is having that chat. And then now I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that, that number. But I don't think you recommend the engineers call, you know, Gas Safe? 100%. But they're always too frightened because they think it triggers— a lot of engineers think it triggers an inspection.

So they don't keep track of how many times you've called.

If you ask a silly question, if you call up, I mean, if you called up and asked about how to do a tightness test, then it would probably trigger an inspection. Right. But they will never penalise you for phoning up and asking technical questions because the more you phone up, the more you're trying to find the answer to something you don't know. And from a Gas Safe point of view, that's the ideal engineer. If you don't know it, you find it out rather than just ignore it.

Just wing it.

Yeah, and too many people wing it, you know, and that's quite a big problem. Too many people just know how to fit a boiler. They don't check the gas pressures, they don't do anything like that. They just fit the boiler, make up the readings, and then they go, they get paid. And unfortunately, that's where issues come back and bite them in the ass, unfortunately. But there's too much of that going on rather than just picking up the phone and ringing GasSafe for an answer. But people are too afraid to ring GasSafe for some reason. But they're actually, they're actually all very nice. They're all very nice people.

Well, really appreciate you coming back on the show answering the questions from the first one.

Nice one.

The first episode is, you know, our most popular podcast. And, you know, thank you for everyone contributing questions, comments, and also especially to Terry. So thank you very much.

Thanks for having me back.