Gas tightness testing rules now account for installation volume because a 1 mbar pressure drop means almost nothing in a short 2-meter pipe but represents real loss in a 20-meter run. The old rules treated all pressure drops the same regardless of how much gas was actually in the system.
Chapters
What was the reason for these changes? So this has been spoken about for many years. From what I can see, the reason this has come about is because actually it makes sense to work out how much gas is being lost if you've got a leak. Now, if you've got a tiny gas run, you know, gas meter is below the boiler and there's a bit of 22 and a bit of 15 over, you know, a meter, 2 meters max. Well, that's going to hold very, very little gas in terms of installation volume. Now, if you've got a 1 millibar leak over the 2-minute test, compared to, let's say, a 20-meter run of 22mm pipe, if that's got a 1 millibar leak over 2 minutes, well, the bigger the installation volume, the more gas is going to leak out over that for that 1 millibar to drop. So this is where this change sort of makes sense, that it should have been this way in the first place. It's almost like they were just simplifying it before, because actually you do want to know how much gas is leaking out.