Gas fireplace in purchasing house

[raspberrylimoncello]

Hi there
Hoping you might be able to help. :-)
We are in the process of buying a house, it was built in the late 90s and generally needs modernising. In the living room there is a gas powered fireplace with a taupe marble surround. I had intended to upcycle the surround with some fireplace paint and tile the back.

I am just thinking is there any questions we need to be asking our solicitors to ask re the fire? We had a gas boiler certificate but no mention of the fire or the chimney and looking at the way they've set the room up I don't think they use the fire (they've popped a vase and faux flowers in front of the fire)
Do chimneys need regular sweeping and gas fires servicing? If so, should we request this is done prior to exchange?

Many thanks

Move the flowers immediately. We had this and I never looked behind....when they left we found the fire damaged - just the black material at the back - so you would think it's easily replaced....but no the fireplace is obsolete and I can't get replacement parts. The fire has been condemned by the gas company and we are unable to use it at all.

Make sure they confirm the fire is in working order. If necessary ask for a service on it to give you peace of mind. (I have never had one before so don't know if they need servicing regularly like a boiler.)

I think they are supposed to have a regular service and be checked they are not leaking. I also think there should be an installation certificate, certainly we had one but 06 house maybe the 90’s were different.

Do chimneys need regular sweeping and gas fires servicing?
No we’ve recently had a new one. (I suppose you can get it serviced, but we generally wait until they stop working and get someone in then)
If so, should we request this is done prior to exchange? No your responsibility. I suppose you could request it if you want to though.

But definitely see if it works, my friend has just bought a house and the fire didn’t work. They have knocked a couple of grand off the asking price.Ask how old it is, ours would switch on but it was absolute rubbish!

Perhaps find out when it was installed and was it installed by a Gas Safe Engineer? Has it been serviced?

Oh @Mumdiva99 that's terrible!

I am pretty certain it was installed with the house when built in 1997. Looking at other images of houses on the same street on Rightmove, they all have the same kind of fireplace. The people we are buying from haven't been here long and looking at the photos from when they purchased it, it doesn't look like they have done much to the house at all, so I would guess maybe they haven't had it serviced or chimney swept.

Thanks everyone

gas fire in our new house was the cause of a gas leak. Had to rip out the kitchen to trace and cap the leak/gas. Gas fire now removed. Can they provide assurance that its been checked as gas safe?

@JourneyToThePlacentaOfTheEarth oh goodness. That's awful I am sorry to hear this. I have sent the solicitors an email now requesting the information on the fire, servicing and installation info.

Out of interest, should this have been something a solicitor should have flagged up when the contents and fixtures list was sent through and a gas fire was listed?

Excuse my ignorance, my previous two purchases were on new builds so none of these types of issues!

@raspberrylimoncello it was one of many issues: dishwasher broken and full of mouldy water, rats in the roof, the whole place was disgusting when we got in....think hairs and scum in showers that hadn't been cleaned in months. Food in fridge. Leaking sink (big pot under it should have given it away), infestation of carpet moths and damaged carpets
The estate agents said we could claim for a clean and they would sort it - but at the point you are moving your stuff in it was quicker to do it ourselves.

The irony being we sold our old house to the people we bought from and I left ours immaculate.

When we viewed the house she hadn't hoovered under a bed where it was obvious and you could see muck......that should have been my warning sign.....she/he was all about appearance.....but low standards. When selling your house you make sure it is clean.....

What is it they say.....buyer beware. Next time I move (if ever) i will check everything.

@Mumdiva99 gosh what a horrible experience for you!!

Similarly, despite not even having exchanged yet I'm already working out how I'll get the house cleaned and completely sparkling (down to fresh loo rolls in the bathrooms !!) when we leave so that the new owners won't have to worry about anything like that when they move in.

It's terrible that others aren't more like that! I am going to contact the estate agents to arrange another more in-depth viewing. Thankyou.

Ask to look in the loft. (How organised it is will tell you a lot - lol) but look for animal droppings, evidence of poison - nails in pieces of wood where they nail the poison in place - dark greasy marks on the light insulation - evidence of the runs rats use. And be suspicious of brand new insulation laid to hide all of the above....not that I'm suspicious now.

When they asked to look in my loft I was but let them.....now I know why!!

Hi all
Just to update following the previous posts.

Our estate agent spoke to the vendor who said he doesn't know if the gas fire place works because they've never used it since living there!

My DH said he doesn't think we will use it... I have other thoughts (have always wanted a real fire!) but that's besides the point surely.... we don't want to buy something that might be broken or heaven forbid dangerous.

I've gone back to the solicitors to say we want to see a service certificate for it, is there anything else I should be asking for?
Thanks in advance DX

If they don’t use it, I dont suggest you do without getting a gas engineer in to check them. We had them growing up (in 80s/90s), dint remember any servicing

They don’t need the chimneys sweeping AFAIK - ours were mounted on front of locked chimneys

Btw, in their situation I would remove & cap the pipe in : I have this in my current home, it cheapest safe solution

Thanks @DespairingHomeowner we really do want it to be serviced and working though?

We had this. Our offer was accepted and several weeks later were told the gas fire doesn’t work. We should have reduced our offer as the replacement fire cost £4,000 and a lot of stress. Be careful. Ask for all the guarantees and get an estimate for replacement if needed. Ask for a certificate stating that fire is in working order.

Thanks @Runningdownthathill this is useful to know. I'd hate to come across to the vendors that we are just looking for issues to try and drive the price down this far down the line but equally my concern is we accept it as is and have a bigger bill (or safety issue) down the line as a result. I'm going to go back to the EA today.
Thanks

Hi, we recently bought a house with one log burner and one gas fire. We didn't touch either of them before getting a qualified HETAS inspector/chimney inspector (same company). They pulled a massive birds nest out of the log burner chimney and deemed it safe to use (which we have with no problems).

I have an (irrational?!) fear of gas. I always have and I don't know why - I don't like cooking on gas so I certainly didn't want a gas fire. We had a gas engineer come in and cap the gas off right back to the kitchen immediately. We need to get the chimney people back to inspect the chimney itself and take the gas cowl of the head of the chimney, but all good to go with an open fire once chimney is checked.

Other options are you could drop a flue into the chimney and have a log burner (installed by a professional, obviously!)

The chimney/HETAS person we had over was absolutely brilliant, really knew their stuff and talked us through every option. None of this work was expensive by the way

A service wouldn’t cost them a great deal, if it would mean the difference between you putting in an offer or not.
The aperture for the flue wasn’t deep enough to meet current regulations on one of our fires so that needed knocking out, but a 1997 house might not have that problem. It was only a day’s work to have that done, new pipes laid beneath floor in 2 rooms and a service on one fire , new fire in other room, to give you some idea of everything that could possibly be wrong with gas fires! Ours is an old house, though.

They just need to get it checked and have a gas safety inspection. The inspector will either pass it and issue a gas safe certificate or fail it and give options to remedy ie; take out and cap off etc

Tbh if you don't use it they don't burn properly because they accumulate dust. It's almost impossible to clean all the vents yourself. You can't use it then, if dusty, because of the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. We've got one and had it capped. We had a full heating service and our engineer detected a small leak. Probably a tap that didn't close properly or something but didn't investigate further just capped it which stopped it. They do need to be serviced.

Thanks everyone. I am so pleased I set up this thread because I thought I might be overreacting.
We are already quite far down the buying process although haven't exchanged, full survey being carried out next week but I don't think they'll take the fireplace into consideration but I will be raising this for sure.
Thanks all

I’ve never heard of having a chimney swept for a gas fire.

What will you do if it doesn’t work? Just get it removed/replaced. You could ask if they can get it serviced for you, which is a bit last minute, but I think at this stage I’d just wait till I’d move in. Getting it serviced will cost about £70. If it’s not safe they can just cap it off there and then (minimal cost).

I don’t think it’s worth doing anything about at this point. It’s along the lines of a wonky kitchen door in terms of cost and hassle.