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When Claire and Ian’s gas provider came around to upgrade their gas meter, the plumber who changed it over was required to complete a pressure test on the clients existing gas pipes. It’s important this test is completed, if the pressure test fails and proves there is a leak on the gas supply pipes, the gas legally has to be shut off until the gas leak is found and fixed.

Unfortunately for Claire and Ian, when the gas provider did the pressure test on their system it had to be shut off as there was a major leak in the gas pipe. Luckily, they live next door to Lawrie the owner of O’Shea Plumbing, which has been around for 41 years as of 2019.

Lawrie visited Claire and Ian the same night their gas was shut off to investigate and take a look at what was involved in fixing the issue. It turned out that Claire and Ian’s galvanised gas pipe was the original gas pipe and was buried under the slab of the house.

To save costs and potential damage to the property (digging up slab to find the leak), Lawrie provided Claire and Ian with an option to renew the gas supply pipes with good quality copper. This option involved a few different courses of action for Claire and Ian to decide upon. They could either run the new copper around the property or penetrate the wall and run the copper through the roof space. The latter option would mean Lawrie could reconnect the new copper gas supply pipes to the ducted heating in the roof space as well as connecting the new gas pipe to the existing copper gas pipe for the hot water unit.

O’Shea Plumbers Andrew and Jeremy arrived on site the next morning and began renewing the gas pipes. While they were organising their tools and setting out where the pipes needed to run, the Plumbers Co-Op in Mitcham arrived and supplied the materials needed to complete the job. About an hour later Claude, a core driller from East Malvern, came and made a perfect hole for the new 32mm copper to fit through.

The job went smoothly and the gas fitting was completed efficiently. All of the pipes were installed in neat, straight lines and clipped appropriately with a test of new gas pipes set at 7KPA which is about 5 times the amount of pressure that will be present when the gas is connected and at operating pressure.

Once Andrew completed the works and testing, he turned on all gas appliances on the property and ensured their gas fixtures were supplying and burning at the correct pressure.

He found that the Pressure Temperature Relief Valve (PTR) on the hot water unit was leaking and very old and required changing. Andrew also measured the water pressure as Claire had mentioned to him that they had been experiencing water hammer (noise coming from the water pipes). Andrew presented Claire and Ian with options to supply and install a new PTR Valve as well as install pressure control to hot and cold water. This took the pressure from just under 1000KPA (double what is recommended from VBA) down to 500KPA. 

These fixes will be sure to drastically improve the plumbing in Claire and Ian’s home.

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