Gas supply losing pressure within the house - who is responsible

[thetrees]

Sorry, I know this is really boring. My boiler's not firing up. The reliable plumbing company I use came to check it out and say that there is a drop in pressure between the meter and the boiler (and hob) due to a defect in the gas meter governor.

I contacted Shell who say there is nothing wrong based on the meter readings they have and told me to contact Homeserve.

Homeserve say they can't do anything to do with meters, that's the suppliers responsibility.

Shell say they will charge £168 if they come to look at the meter and there is nothing wrong.

I know Shell are bastards, I got transferred to them when my green provider went under and haven't had the energy to move.

What should I do?

I'd probably find a local gas safety engineer to come and take a look. It'll cost of course but they might be able to pinpoint what's wrong and then you take it from there.

By the time you've got a local engineer to come out surely that would have cost as much as calling Shell out.

And there is always the chance that that will be the correct reason, so you may get charged nothing !

The big question is, how do the "reliable local plumbing company" know that the gas governer is not working correctly ? Did they actually measure the pressure in the line ? How do they know for sure the pressure drop is not due to an intermittent leak or due to over demand ? Did the boiler display a fault code ? Do you find the cutouts co-incide with you using other gas appliances at the same time ?

I would want to get to the bottom of this, if only because there could be other reasons for the boiler cutting out. For example if it is a pressurised heating system and the water circuit is below the minimum recommended pressure.

£168 for peace of mind that the meter is OK (with a probability it might actually be £0 if there really is something wrong with it) doesn't seem like a large charge to me.

Thanks @gaspanic . What they said on the invoice was:

'Found boiler struggling to ignite, found 29mbar standing pressure at the gas valve and when boiler wanted to ignite it dropped down to zero mbar and then gradually rose up to 18mbar pressure. Also found problem with hob igniting and flame was big then small. Customer to ring gas board as this is a gas meter governor defect.'

No idea if that makes sense or not. There wasn't an error code the reset button just came on.

I had noticed gas cutting out on one of the hob rings over the past few weeks but hadn't though much of it.

On the other hand, just before Christmas the pressure in the boiler kept falling, they said the prv had blown and they repressurised and did some small fix that I didn't understand. When they came this time they said that a new prv wasn't needed and in fact the pressure had been holding.

I think it still points to the main problem being with gas but I am so out of my depth with all this.

Well I am not a gas engineer, but it makes sense to me. The fact that the hob flame goes low then high is consistent with a pressure drop in the system when demand is generated from the boiler. It maybe something sticky in the governer/regulator, the valve is slow to open in response to a pressure drop caused by the significant demand of the boiler.

Problem is with all this sort of stuff is that problems with the meter are the responsibility of the supplier, problems with the supply after the meter are the responsibility of the homeowner, so you can get caught between a rock and a hard place - where the supplier and homeowners engineers blame each other for the problem and it is difficult to get resolution. And of course the homeowners engineers are not allowed to touch the meter.

There probably is some chance that it is still in the homeowner part of the system, but I think I would get the meter checked out for £168 and then be more than happy if it turned out to be £0 due to a faulty meter.

I would make sure when you get it checked you give the diagnostic information from the plumber to the person checking the meter and ask them what their opinion is before they start work.