Earth Bonding for Gas Plastic Entry Pipe

[AlanE]

John I may have caused a bit of confusion. The meter itself is not insulating but an actual fitting is used that isolates the customers and suppliers installations.

One problem that exists for 'gasmen' is that our (I was before retiring CORGI, and then Gas Safe, registered) regulations simply require us to look for, and visually inspect, the bonding for the gas pipe to ensure it is there and within 600mm of the meter. Not many had the necessary equipment, nor qualifications, to do anything else.

If the bonding was missing, or didn't look right, we were required to issue a warning notice to the 'responsible person' at the property suggesting they contact an electrician to check it. We were not required to do anything else.

If they chose to do nothing next time we went to the property for instance to service the boiler, landlord safety check etc. we would again issue warning notice. We had no legal authority to do anything else.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

When the gas men disconnected the earth bond from the gas pipe, did they confirm there is still an earth present? '60s house, could be the gas pipe was being used as the main earth connection and the OP may now be unearthed.

Was that ever allowed?

Water, yes, but gas?

 

[RF Lighting]

Not permitted, but certainly not unheard of...

 

[AndyPRK]

When the gas men disconnected the earth bond from the gas pipe, did they confirm there is still an earth present? '60s house, could be the gas pipe was being used as the main earth connection and the OP may now be unearthed.

pj

I thought only water pipes were ever used as an earth. And never gas.

 

[JohnW2]

John I may have caused a bit of confusion. The meter itself is not insulating but an actual fitting is used that isolates the customers and suppliers installations.

I realised that (what you wrote was very clear), and what I was saying is equally true whether the meter itself or a coupling is what electrically insulates the suppliers incoming gas pipe from the customer's gas pipework.

The point I was making was a oft-discussed matter - namely that if the meter and/or coupling were electrically insulating, then customer's pipework would not constitute an 'extraneous conductive part' as defined in the Wiring Regs (BS7671). Such pipework therefore probably does not need Main Protective Bonding (although some people interpret the regs as saying that it does!) and, in certain (albeit unusual) circumstances, to install it 'unnecessarily' could actually increase, rather than decrease, risk.

Kind Regards, John

 

[amka]

Hi,

Thanks to everyone for the replies.
I'm going to sound stupid but how do you upload pictures on this website?

I've had a good look again - on the outside of the property, the pipe is copper but with a white (looks plastic) coating. It goes up about 3 feet and enters under the stairs.
Directly inside, the pipe looks silver metallic - about 2 inches in length and about one inch of that is coated in yellow plastic. So 1st inch is yellow and the 2nd is silver metallic.
From the silver metallic, it goes to the on/off switch handle valve thing (light gold in colour but not copper coloured)
From the on/off handle, there's a silver coloured 10 inch flexible coiled hose
which goes into a toadstool shaped connection. The hose sounds metal when I tap on it.
A large metal bolt connects the toadstool to the gas meter.

The electric meter's about a foot away, also under the stairs.

I think I've been fobbed off by British Gas and will need to write in to them. It's not plastic after all.

Many thanks,

A

 

[ban-all-sheds]

how do you upload pictures on this website?

//www.diynot.com/network/DIYnot/albums/67/180

Although that is a desperately cumbersome way to do it - a much easier and quicker alternative is to use an image hosting site, e.g. http://postimage.org/ (other sites are available) to upload your images.

Some hosting sites don't allow direct links to the images, and make you use thumbnails, but if so the good ones will provide the code all packaged and ready to paste in.



A particularly useful feature I find with postimage is that you can download a (windoze) app which pops into life when you take a screenshot and allows you to crop, annotate etc the image and then do a single-click upload.

No exaggeration - it took me less than 30 seconds to capture part of this window, upload it, get the URL of the image back and paste it into the post.

ALT-Print Screen popped up the window in the Postimage tool:

I cropped out what I wanted, clicked upload and then clicked the button to copy the URL when it was done.

Other image hosting sites are available, I am not associated with Postimage in any way. Personally I would prefer people not to use Photobucket because of the snooping they do.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Err...

Is anybody else having problems seeing the last image above?

It resolutely fails to display properly in Firefox, but it's fine in IE, and if I download it from the Postimage site it's also all there.

 

[EFLImpudence]

No, perfect on Chrome.

Assuming it is the last image and not missing.
It is the fourth image on your post.

 

[JohnW2]

No, perfect on Chrome. ssuming it is the last image and not missing. It is the fourth image on your post.

Same here. All four images (assuming that there shouldn't be more than four!) are fine with both IE and Chrome. I don't have Firefox on this machine, so can't tell you about that.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Yo - last (4th) image now displaying fully.

Very odd.