Gas Boiler Installation

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Friends have a gas central heating boiler installed in a cupboard adjacent to an outside wall. The flue and air inlet are of the balanced-flue type. The boiler is fixed to the inside face of the outside wall. As the room is being re-modelled, they have decided to brick up the cupboard on the inside. This leaves the situation that the only access to the boiler is from the outside, where there is a small access door. This door is about 60cm high by 45cm wide, the bottom being about 20cm from ground level. Since being put in, this door has been penetrated by two drainage pipes, and so cannot be opened. Our friends have been advised by their builder that he can cut a smaller access door, above the level of the drainage pipes. However, this will entail crawling on hands and knees from the outside, through this "cat flap" of a door, and access will still be impeded by water and gas pipes on the inside, which run around the boiler. I am very concerned that the proposed arrangement will be either unsafe, or unworkable, or both. Can anyone please advise?
 
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Three words, NO NO NO!!!!
Do NOT do it it likely that this will contraviene the MI's Installation instructions and certainly you will struggle any one who is prepared to maintain it for you!! :eek:
 
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Thanks to all for the posts. Can anyone quote me specific gas safety regulations that this installation is likely to contravene?
Nay indeed, vicvapour! (vicvapour? aye, there's the rub!)
 
No - NOT our idea - it really has happened, but to friends. Currently, they have NO access to the boiler. The inside is bricked up, the outside has an immovable cover through which pipes are running - and the inside of that wall is a jumble gas and water pipes from and to the (now inaccessible) boiler. And the only access being proposed is via an oversized cat-flap!!
No wonder we are worried! So thanks everyone for the opinions and information. Yes, of course common sense would tell anyone not to do it this way - but common sense seems in very short supply here.
While reluctant to interfere, we are so concerned that we are seeking some definitive advice (or better still, some regs to quote) that will let us go back to our friends with concrete opinion that what they have done will not be condoned by the gas authorities.
 
Unfortunately regulations can not deal with determined stupidity.

After all we moan about the nanny state most of the time.

Best example I can think of at the moment is to park their car in a tight space and them ask them to change a tyre.

Then ask them to place themselves in the position of the next poor fook that has to do any major work to the boiler.
 
Apart from the likelihood that they have invalidated their home insurance, let them get on with it as they see fit. When the boiler inevitably breaks down let them enjoy finding anybody to fix and/or service it. :rolleyes:

Sometimes you've just got to let people find their own way with these matters.
 
Thanks, cantaloup63. My wife and I had just about reached that conclusion ourselves, though it is hard to stand by and see people making such costly (and possibly dangerous) mistakes.
 

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