Is it normal for gas pipes to be exposed?

[StuntNun]

The gas company is replacing all the piping in my street with plastic pipes and this has apparently meant our gas meter needed to be moved from inside the house to outside the house. They have run a pipe from the new meter box up the wall, over the window outside, through the wall, over a doorway and through an internal wall to reach the location of the old meter. Is it normal to have so much gas pipe exposed? It looks pretty bad.

No. My bil had his meter moved because they needed to replace. So they moved it from the garage to an inside cupboard which backed onto the outside wall.

I would tell them they need to move the meter

Looks horrendous but unfortunately , where your local gas fitter might take the time and effort and cost to channel it into the wall, the utility companies don’t seem to.

I'd be bloody furious at that. Don't know if it's normal though!

It does look jarring. You could probably pay a Gas Safe engineer to reroute the pipes.

I assume the new meter is in the only safe location, so what's an alternative route to the boiler/ kitchen that you have available? Could it go up in the ceiling for example, or run underneath that door if it's a step up?

If it has to run along that wall, I'd want the right section to be raised, so all of the horizontal run is on one level, then see if it could be safely boxed in, if not channelled into the wall.

It doesn’t look great but there’s a lot of rules and regulations about gas pipe installations

I'm guessing there’s a lintel above the door so any channeling in that would be a no

I’m sure it has to be ducted as well ours did when it went through a wall into an extension there’s no way you’d be able to to duct that with those bends

I’m almost sure you just can’t channel it in

When our house was built 40 years ago it was all electric as no gas in the village. Now there is and most houses have got an arrangement of gas pipes outside. All different. I wonder why the gas company didn't just do the same throughout. But yes, not the best look.

I would box that in as indicated by area in black for top of door the full width it would look neater and just paint the other bit same colour as wall
like picture below

Hers picture

When I needed a new boiler, British Gas told me they wouldn’t channel pipes through the floor and I had to have this. I agree it looks awful. I went with a different company.

My DP was a sub-contractor doing this work for Cadent for a few months. He quickly found another job because he hated having to do this kind of thing to people's houses. They have to connect whole streets up pretty quickly and then move on to the next street. If they don't have access to a property (eg if you are away on holiday or refuse to allow what they are proposing) then that property just ends up with no gas and someone will have to go back later. Their job is just to reconnect you to the gas supply as quickly as possible, so unfortunately you will need to pay a gas engineer yourself to tidy things up. It really wasn't a good fit job for my DP who really takes pride in his work!

I have this in my council flat. No choice about ut as it's all contracted by the council. I assume it's all safe and functional, just the cheapest way of doing things. I assume if you have the money, you can box it in or have it routed another way. If it was a fancy flat in Kensington I'm sure they wouldn't do it like this!

Yeah this.

It should be relatively easy to box the majority of it in. The bit on the extreme right is a bit hard to finish off neatly, unless they bring it closer in to the back wall.

There are some rules on ventilation though.

unless you specify it must be hidden and pay for the cost of doing so, then utility company (sub)contractors will do the quickest and easiest fit they can, not the most aesthetically pleasing one.

Same here when I needed to move my boiler. Somehow the well recommended independent company had no issue running the pipes behind the kitchen cabinets but British Gas said they had to run along the ceiling.

Oh, and their quote was over £1,000 more expensive.

They initially wanted to run the pipe up the wall, along the flat roof and up another wall to the loft which sounds even worse tbh.