Super Mario

[AleisterCrowley]

Negligent plumber blows up house with two pensioners in it.

...and is fined £3,000.

Three Grand? Is that all?

And he's now the Manager of the firm that employed him at the time of the blast

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-t ... l-42973683

Sheriff Gilchrist said Hall had missed one of the 20 rings he had needed to solder.

He said: "The consequences were severe because the solder ring that was missed was the gas pipe and the bungalow blew up.

Does sound like there's a 'process issue' there as well. If he's doing hundreds of these , and one missed ring means exploding bungalows, an independent sign-off and/or a leak test may be required??!

[jfgw]

Does sound like there's a 'process issue' there as well. If he's doing hundreds of these , and one missed ring means exploding bungalows, an independent sign-off and/or a leak test may be required??!

If more than one plumber attended the site, an independent sign-off might work. One issue seems to be that the plumber failed to visually check the joint as it was difficult to see. There is no guarantee that a third party would fully check either, especially if the fitter had a perfect track record.

A leak test would have been carried out (and this is stated in the article). Mains gas is about 21mbar which is very little. It is equivalent to about 0.3 psi; 8.4 inches of water and 16 mm of mercury. I am not a gas fitter but I believe that the test pressure is similar to this. The joint was fluxed ready to solder (the article refers to it as "paste used to prepare the joint for connection."). The flux will have sealed the joint and the test pressure would not have been anywhere near enough to have blown the joint apart.

A "yank test" is likely to have found the problem but I would not see this as a substitute for a visual check as an incompletely soldered joint would hold physically but may leak at a later date.

Julian F. G. W.

[DiamondEcho]

Mains gas is about 21mbar which is very little.

This reminds me of when I had the gas meter within my home moved by a couple of Transco engineers. They cut the steel mains pipe and to my alarm the room - of course - clearly began to fill with gas. They then took just a heavily grease-soaked length of course hessian cloth (like perforated jute sackcloth) to stop the leak, as one might over-casually apply a bandage on a bleeding limb. I was standing there expecting 'the explosion' if I moved and created a static spark, meanwhile they perhaps expected my reaction and were having a jolly old time. This gas escape was of course repeated when they came to recouple the meter in the new location.