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Hello STW Saturday nighters,
I live in a 4 storey block of flats which is currently being reroofed and getting a lick of paint. It's being carried out on behalf of the freeholder, a housing association. I own the top floor flat. The reeroofing is nearly complete.
This evening the gas combi boiler started misbehaving, misifirng and the water wouldn't get up to temp. Also feeling dizzy and cranky. I hopped out on the scaffolding and noticed the c**ts had piled massive rubble bags up against and over the boiler flue.
Have all windows open at the moment which has "magically" cleared the headache, but am absolutley seething. They're putting my family at risk. The builders that are employed (we had no say in the matter other than paying) are repackaged cowboys and I've already had numerous run ins with them over other shoddy work and poor management, however this is a new low! Am I over-reacting to think we could have died?
I've written to the contractor liaison as well as our contact at the housing association (useless).
Who do I report this to? HSE?
No, you're not over-reacting at all. HSE sounds like a reasonable first step if the Housing Association are being that useless.
Have you taken photographs of the state the roofers left it in?
PS Do you have Carbon Monoxide detectors?
You've been lucky to catch it, take photos, email them to HSE and the housing association, if it had gone bad while you were sleeping you could be dead.
You weren't overreacting. Our friend died of Carbon monoxide poisoning.
Her family set up a trust in her name to raise awareness about the dangers related to carbon monoxide.
If you're interested the website is http://www.katiehainestrust.com
I'd ring the company directors, trading standards, local council.
Good luck.
Let's see if the new forum is still blocking Mail links. EDIT: Apparently no longer abhorrent!
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> http://www.****/news/article-1013501/Bungling-builder-guilty-killing-man-carbon-monoxide-blocking-gas-flue.html</span>
As above, I would call HSE.
Call the gas emergency number 0800 111999. You and your family have been exposed to carbon monoxide through gross negligence. Your local gas transporters emergency engineers should take control of the situation, referring it the HSE for investigation, and give you advice re blood tests to determine the level of exposure.
Thanks all!
Yep, actually ring gas emergency people tonight, they can get the rest of the site inspected ASAP.
Children are more prone to the effects than you, as above ring the emergency number. Then go nuclear with the builders and whoever instructed them. All work should be halted and an immediate assessment made. You're right to be livid.
That gas number is a good call - what if others are affected?
I've just got off the line with the National gas help line. They're sending someone around right away.
Again thank you all!
Hope you and family and rest of the flats are ok.
What boiler? It shouldn't be able to expel carbon monoxide into the room even if the flue is blocked.
Looks like you got better service from HSE than I did when builders capped the flues on my gas fires! It took a lot of work to even get HSE / Gas safe to acknowledge they could take action and they refused to prosecute the builders who could have killed me with their incompetence
A balanced flue boiler should not be able to leak CO into the room however no matter what the issue is - you must have a leaky flue
Gross negligence there. Somebody should be getting the sack for that. I’d be tempted to get the local press involved as well.
Do you have a carbon monoxide alarm ragnarok? If you have had the boiler serviced every year, your gas engineer should have supplied and installed an alarm. If not, i'd be asking questions about that too.
Hi,
National Gas sent an engineer around. He raised his eyeborws mightily at what had happened and said it was fortunate I was the proactive scaffold clambering type. If my wife had been home alone or anyone "normal" living there it could have ended in tragedy. He's filing a report from his end.
At the end he concluded everything was safe, told me to air the place out for a further hour. His gas/CO reader was at zero the whole time from when he arrived but I'd allready had everything fully open for nearly an hour then.
Went down to AE and had blood checked. It was about 5 hours since potential exposure before they actually took the sample. That came back clean and I'm very happy about that. Maybe it was nothing, a headache can come of many things.. my wife and I work long hours.. but just the potential is frightenting.
I have a CO alarm. The battery was dead, that was my bad. I'm going to get a mains wired one asap.
Will get on the line to HSE first thing tomorrow. Worried that will cause a site shutdown and delay the works, I just want the jokers to finish up an be gone- all they've got left is paint, but the potential of them reapeating the same thing on another job has to be adressed. Can't have cowboys like that on the loose! For now just thankful that I caught it early and family is safe.
National gas took the event very seriously. Great professional guy came around. The AE staff were fantastic. With all the doom and gloom of late it's good to know things still work.
Again, thanks to all here who responded. Amazing place!... and there's bike content to boot!
shocking!
Definitely contact the Housing association too, mention that the Homes & Communities Agency, (HCA), would be very interested, this will sharpen their response.
Glad to hear you're all ok.
I have a feeling what you described will be notifiable to the HSE anyhow, but you contacting them won't do any harm. Did you take pics of what you found when you were on the scaffolding. Wouldn't waste your time trying to find someone sensible at Gas Safe. Doesn't sound like it was a gas installer at fault.