Gas Safe Register - They just recommended I search Check a Trade instead to find a gas engineer..

[Martin_J]

The Gas Safe Register replaced the CORGI registration in 2009 and is the official list of gas engineers who are qualified to work legally on gas appliances. The Gas Safe Register is also the official list of businesses that are legally permitted to carry out gas work.


I have spent the past two months trying to do a search for a boat 'gas check' engineer. Apparently we have to go to the www.gassaferegister.co.uk website, choose Fuel Type - LPG then choose Appliance type - 'Pipework Boats LPG (CORE)'.

This search fails for me.. It even locks the web browser and you can't even get back to the website afterwards, even with a refresh!

Telephoning Gas Safe register and asking the support person, they try the same search and it fails for them as well - It fails to find anything and also locks their web browser. I have tried this many times.
Emailing doesn't get any further apart from a reply saying "it's a problem with the website and it's with IT"

My last call to Gas Safe Register ended with them asking me to search the Check A Trade website then calling Gas Safe to see if the engineer from Check A Trade is qualified!!!

Is this really true? - Are we supposed to accept the fact that searching Gas Safe Register doesn't work and that we are now supposed to rely on Check A Trade to find a gas person?

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to escalate the search issue with Gas Safe Register.. Perhaps thousands of us could all try a search and if it fails, telephone them to ask they find a local engineer for you..


Note - This is NOT a forum post asking for gas safe engineer names, company names or recommendations. It is solely about the lack of search function on what is supposed to be the official web site.

 

[R.Ems]

Might I politely suggest you are barking up the wrong tree?

Most Gas Safe ticketed people have never seen a boat. The Gas Safe cert has no marine content.

If you are in contact with your local boating community, ask them. Shouldn't be a problem in Pompey.

Expect charlatans telling you things need replacing, blah blah, and quoting you.

Is it to satisfy your insurance broker, and have they asked for a 'safety cerificate' or some such? There is no such thing legally, unless you are going Blue Book etc.

My local caravan lpg chap is aware of this niche, and for £100 PA pops round for a chinwag and issues a spurious official-looking document to satisfy the shiny-arses in the insurance brokerage.

 

[Martin_J]

The Gas Safe Register has two items in their search function that apply to boats...

Cookers LPG in Boats
Pipework Boats LPG (CORE)

If they have those search terms on the website, I would have expected them to work.

 

[Martin_J]

Thread drift - It would have to be part of a different thread where we discuss how to tell an insurance company that there is no such thing as an official 'gas safety certificate' for a sea based boat and what their response to that was.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

Don't boats on the inland waterways require some sort of certification for gas? Might be worth asking on the Thames forum or checking out another forum for inland waterways.
Bro knows stuff about inland waterways might be worth asking him. Although as it costs an arm and a leg for the engineers to get certified I bet there are very few in this area.

 

[Martin_J]

Wherever the boat is.. and yes, they do on inland waterways..

This is a Forum Post about why the official gas check register search doesn't work.. and how can I escalate it to them.. or get them to realise that being the official register, they ought to take the website issue seriously.

 

[waynes world]

You need a Marine LPG Engineer. Completely different from Corgi etc. You dont need any certs for non inland waterways i believe, unless insurance requires it. Inland water ways you dont need any specialist LPG fitter, certified etc, as you can do the work yourself as on tidal waterways.
Inland waterways all boats need a BSC and all the BSS inspectors are meant do is check all fittings are correct and runs supported etc. and no leaks, usually with a bubble tester if no manometer is fitted.

 

[LittleSister]

Thread drift - It would have to be part of a different thread where we discuss how to tell an insurance company that there is no such thing as an official 'gas safety certificate' for a sea based boat and what their response to that was.

There have been such threads, with, as far as I recall, the respective OPs unable to find anyone who could produce the sort of certificate the insurance company seemed to be imagining was available to protect their underwriters' backsides.

If this were such a thread, which of course it is not, I would suggest try to get a Boat Safety Scheme qualified inspector to do an inspection limited to the boat's gas installation, and to provide a letter confirming it conforms to the relevant requirements of the Boat Safety Scheme.

Given the thread you have actually created, and the question you have refocused us on, I suggest you might try beating your head against a wall, and seeing if that produces any better results from the Gas Safety Register than the sensible steps you have taken to date. I think anything further would seem a distraction from the vastly more important matter of getting/remaining afloat. (Based on my experience of the speed that organisations generally move at, and my suspicion that even if the register were actually functioning it would be of no help to you.)

Good luck with however you proceed from here.

 

[CapPugwash]

Deleted.

There's plenty of rubbish websites in the world, particularly government ones.

 

[ithet]

The Gas Safe Register has two items in their search function that apply to boats...

Cookers LPG in Boats
Pipework Boats LPG (CORE)

If they have those search terms on the website, I would have expected them to work.

My guess would be that the search is returning an unhandled null exception and crashing the code - because there are no entries under those items in the database.

 

[Martin_J]

My guess would be that the search is returning an unhandled null exception and crashing the code - because there are no entries under those items in the database.

I did wonder the same - but basing the search on a Southsea (Portsmouth) postcode, I would have expected a non-zero search result.

I also understand that a search could result in zero matches.. but to lock up the browser enough for it not to even get to the gassaferegister home page in a new tab is quite an acheivement for the website designers.

 

[R.Ems]

Maybe ask the question in The Lounge section..this bit's about boats, including gas installations, but computerism, not so much.

 

[LittleSister]

Maybe ask the question in The Lounge section..this bit's about boats, including gas installations, but computerism, not so much.

There's more gas (mainly hot air) in the Lounge, certainly.

 

[Spirit (of Glenans)]

Wouldn't it just be easier to ask for a quote from another insurance company? I've never been asked by my insurance company for any certification of my gas installation.

 

[Martin_J]

Wouldn't it just be easier to ask for a quote from another insurance company? I've never been asked by my insurance company for any certification of my gas installation.

That's not to say they won't ask next time and then you might need to search the Gas Safe Register....

Surely it can't be too much to ask for a website that has been put online for people so use as a search engine, for it to actually work.

 

[superheat6k]

Wouldn't it just be easier to ask for a quote from another insurance company? I've never been asked by my insurance company for any certification of my gas installation.

The problem here is that when I had my recently purchased boat surveyed the Surveyor noted that the boat's gas installation should be inspected by a Gas Safe registered engineer. The Insurers require the Surveyor's recommendations be undertaken, so therein lies the problem. If I do not comply, then they can repudiate any claim, although it would have to be directly related, e.g. they could not deny a claim for stranding just because I didn't have a Gas Safe certificate..

Annoyingly I am an F Gas Cat 1 qualified engineer, but this is not Gas Safe, although we work with systems operating at ~ 45 bar, rather than 0.5 Bar, but I cannot legally leak check my own gas systems.

I simply caveated that I would have the system checked in due course. But if the boat caught fire and this was linked to the gas install I reckon the Insurance company would simply deny a claim without a certificate.

 

[Daedelus]

I took the easy way out and simply asked the marina if they knew of any gas engineers and got 2 or 3 firms who were local.

(Mrs D was a technical officer in British Gas and insisted that qualified people check everything on a very regular basis)

 

[Martin_J]

I took the easy way out and simply asked the marina if they knew of any gas engineers and got 2 or 3 firms who were local.

(Mrs D was a technical officer in British Gas and insisted that qualified people check everything on a very regular basis)

Thanks, but surely the gas safe register search should be the way forward....

Someone has spent a load of money setting it up.... It just feels like a waste of that money if neither the public nor their help desk staff can use it to run a search.

 

[The Q]

Don't boats on the inland waterways require some sort of certification for gas? Might be worth asking on the Thames forum or checking out another forum for inland waterways.
Bro knows stuff about inland waterways might be worth asking him. Although as it costs an arm and a leg for the engineers to get certified I bet there are very few in this area.

To do your own gas on a boat you don't need a certificate for inland waterways, to do someone else's you do. Unless you are running some sort of commercial business from the boat, then the work has to be signed off by a certified gas tech for LPG.
Since I worked at Bacton gas works for a while on 1000psi gas systems, I'm quite happy doing my own gas work at 45psi . But if your not confident in your abilities I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[ChathamSailor]

I have used a “so called” gas safety engineer from that register. The bloke who turned up might have been a gas engineer but had never been anywhere near a boat in his life. Came up with advice that we all know about anyway, nothing marine specific or useful, took my money issued a certificate not worth the paper it’s printed on “job done” as far as the insurance company is concerned. I searched for two years to find him, marina’s clubs and all the normal routes were explored, there just are not enough competent small boat gas safety engineers around.