Ridge tile flue inspection

Red Alert

We received a notice from Bord Gais that they want to have a look at any open flued ridge-tile vents. Our house hasn't or never had a ridge tile vent. Our open flue gas boiler exhausts through a B-Vent pipe installed up the old oil boiler chimney, which is a full brick chimney as opposed to a just flue pipe.

Why is there the sudden interest in the "ridge tile" vents, or is it really to try and push people using open-flue boilers to replace them? Has anyone else received this notice or had then inspection done?

Alex M

you probably live in an area with a large volume of ridge tile appliances,
ridge tile appliances are classed as "reportable" appliances on safety grounds. there are a lot of cases where the flues have come apart in attic spaces so the check is purely safety based.
bord gais networks carry out the inspections and in the event that your appliance has to be isolated they will refer you to the rgi listing for repair/replacement works, they are not permitted to recommend a third party directley .
dont worry the check is genuine

Red Alert

Thanks for the info!

The only large number of ridge tile appliances in my area are in another estate nearby. They have gas-fired warm-air heaters with a tiny water heater in the same casing. My granny used to live there but I can't recall exactly what the unit looked like. I'm not sure there are many still in use now, although some college friends lived in a house with it still working.

Our estate was bizarrely kitted out with piped metered kerosene. The houses had these really odd looking natural-circulation air heaters that were really like a very ugly stove. This was in a cupboard in the middle of the house with grilles, and had no fan or timer. (The larger 4-beds had a fanned-circulation kerosene unit with an electrically-controlled burner. There was at least one still in service until very recently when the fan packed it in.)

Must have been something strange in the air in my area around 70's or something.

Alex M

when the warm air units were replaced the original flues were re-used for convenience. there are pockets of houses done this way everywhere, makes replacing the boilers now very tricky, but thats for another day ...

yoshytoshy

Red Alert wrote: »

Our estate was bizarrely kitted out with piped metered kerosene. The houses had these really odd looking natural-circulation air heaters that were really like a very ugly stove. This was in a cupboard in the middle of the house with grilles, and had no fan or timer. (The larger 4-beds had a fanned-circulation kerosene unit with an electrically-controlled burner. There was at least one still in service until very recently when the fan packed it in.)

Must have been something strange in the air in my area around 70's or something.

A lot of houses in malahide have systems like that ,theres also asbestos used to insulate the ducting in some houses.