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QUESTION:I'm wondering whether anyone could give me some opinions on the
question of fumes from gas boilers?
I live in a house converted into flats - the house is part of a
terrace of similarly converted flats. Recently, the house next door
was renovated and 3 fan-assisted flues were installed about half a
foot from the communal entry door of our house. So basically, the
set-up is that when you walk into our communal hallway, there are
boilers fitted immediately on the other side of the wall dividing our
house and the house next door.
Whilst waiting for new carpet to be laid in the hallway, we noticed a
slightly sweetish fumey smell in this area - not a 'gas' smell as such
but some sort of 'other' fume smell. Actually when you go out of our
front door, when there are fumes being expelled from any of the
fan-assisted flues, you can smell the normal sort of gas smell (as you
would expect) but that is being dispersed by the wind and not being
blown back into the house so that's not part of the problem.
As next doors boilers are obviously plumbed in on the other side of
the wall it seems as if there are some fumes being given off which are
rising through the gaps in the bare floorboards and into our hallway
which is a bit worrying.
I called the gas board out and a chap took a measurement and told me
that there was no gas being given off so that was good news. However,
all the other people in the house can smell that smell now and it
looks as if it comes and goes according to whether there is evidence
of the boilers being in use next door ...ie there are normal gassy
fumes coming from the fan-assisted flues outside.
So, I am wondering if there are any other harmful fumes that might be
being given off by the boilers that do not smell traditionally gassy
and that the gas board wouldn't measure for?
Sorry about the length of this but it's a bit of a complicated one to
explain and it's not an area I know anything about at all - any
advice/ideas would be very gratefully received
ANSWER: A typical fan-flued boiler terminal would need 300mm horizontally to the
door (you say about 150mm).
More worrying is that that the terminals might typically need 300mm
horizontally OR 1500mm vertical seperation between them.
If you can tell us the make/model of the boilers then someone can see if
the manufacturers instructions have been followed (or not).
When an installation has one sort of fault (like incorrect terminal
locations) there is a good chance it has a number of other faults, and
also a chance that
Once the boilers have been in use for a while and any new paint smells
have gone I would not expect _any_ odours inside at all.
I strongly suspect that there is some incompetant gas fitting going on
here and the closeness to your door has all the makings for a big dispute.
So you need to go carefully and get all your facts right.
Some pictures and the make/model of the boielrs would be a good start.
Any idea why the boilers were not fitted within in each flat which would
have been a more typically installation?
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