Licensed gas fitting
across Ashfield

Stop reading and act. Do not touch a light switch, a power point or anything that could spark, and do not use a phone inside the building. Open doors and windows on the way out, turn the gas off at the meter if you can safely reach it, get everyone outside, and ring from outdoors. In a block, knock on the doors you pass on the way. We answer 24 hours.

Worth establishing before you buy an appliance rather than after it is sitting in the hallway. Plenty of these blocks were never plumbed for gas to individual flats at all, and were designed around electric storage hot water and electric cooking. Others have gas to the building but not to every unit. It takes us a short visit to confirm what actually reaches your flat, and that is a far cheaper conversation than a return.

It means the incoming supply is common property rather than yours, and that changes who decides. A number of these blocks were built with a single service to the building instead of a meter for each flat. Where that is the case, a new connection into your unit is a matter for the owners corporation, not something you can simply arrange. We establish which arrangement your block has and tell you plainly whose decision it is before anyone spends money.

Sometimes straightforwardly, sometimes not at all, and the answer depends on the building rather than on you. If your flat has its own metered supply with capacity, it is generally a normal connection job. If the building has a single service, or there is no gas to your unit, it becomes a strata question and possibly a significant one. Ask us to check before you order the appliance, because that sequence saves a lot of grief.

Ask for the number and search it on the NSW Fair Trading public register. It takes about a minute and ours is 368473C. Unlicensed gas work is illegal in NSW, and in strata it carries an extra sting: a claim arising from it can affect the whole scheme's insurance, not just the flat where the work was done.

Always, on every gas job, without asking. A Certificate of Compliance is legally required for gas work in NSW and it records what was done, that it was tested, and under whose licence. In strata, lodge a copy with the building records as well as keeping your own, because the owners corporation will need it and nobody will be able to find it in ten years otherwise.

A leak test and make-safe is $200 to $450. An availability and ownership check, establishing whether gas reaches your flat and whose supply it is, is $180 to $350. Connecting an appliance to an existing point is $250 to $550. A new gas point within your own lot is $450 to $1,200. The Certificate of Compliance is included on every gas job.