replacement boiler (and asbestos and flue) :|

[scoobysnak]

This is a long story, which I'll try to keep short:

Seven weeks ago (on the day I was going on holiday) british gas came out to do the landlord's gas safety check (under the homecare thing) - I'm one of four tenants - landlady is in sri lanka.

outcome - boiler/flue not safe due to age and condition. so they put a yellow label on it saying don't use it.

other tenants agree that they should just switch it on 'twice a day' for 'two short periods' ...until it gets fixed.

one of the tenants decides to take on board getting it sorted, as i'm on holiday and normally deal with these sort of things. initially she decided to get someone out to give a second opinion (on a safety check??). (uncovered lots of info about british gas ripping people off - telling them they needed new boiler, etc when they didn't really.)

anyway, second opinion said that they couldn't remove the flue if it had asbestos, but gave a quote for a new boiler. (didn't say 'no, it is safe!')

landlady said that if work needed done then we should also get a quote from british gas. apparently an 'engineer called last thursday instead of a sales rep' and so was unable to quote for the work. other tenant then tried phoning british gas and apparently after half an hour got bored holding on the phone and put it down.

i've just got an email from her saying that as british gas are unable to quote for the full job, she's 'looking around' for a third corgi engineer who can. when asked what this meant, she said that they are unable to replace the flue. now is this true??? would BG really put in a new boiler without a flue?

it's been established that BG don't remove asbestos - and i can sort of understand this - so we need to get a specialist asbestos removal company in for that. but assuming that there's no flue and just the old boiler, would BG fit a new boiler AND not put in a flue?

i need to establish this before i can contact the landlady and say to her that i need to deal with it.

many thanks for any advice in advance. :)

[htg engineer]

Why do you pay rent ? you shouldn't have to phone anyone or do anything. It's the land lady's responsibility to provide heating appliances and to repair replace etc if anything goes wrong, she should have boiler and flue removed, the flue by a company thats registered for the disposal of asbestos.

For the age of the boiler, you wont get a new flue for it. A Condensing boiler should be fitted in its place. Tell the landlady to get the new boiler fitted asap.

Phone plumber to remove boiler and fit new boiler, he will fit flue to the new boiler, but will not remove the old flue. Then the asbestos company can remove the flue.