Gas Hot Water System Leak Gone Bad. You Need to See This

Do you have a gas hot water system leak issue?

We hope it isn’t like this case where the gas hot water system leak gone bad.

In the video below, we’ll show you a difficult case of a gas hot water system leak and why plumbers are late sometimes and don’t meet appointments.

The Initial Issue

When you put a new hot water system in or something like that, you’ve got to test the gas and make sure that the whole main in the whole house is gas tight. And if it’s not, you need to find and fix it before you can connect another appliance onto it.

We got a late night call about a leaking hot water system. They’ve got no hot water. So we arranged to come out the next morning, pushed people around to try and get it sorted.

The Bigger Issue

When we came there, disconnected all of the water from the hot water system and tested the gas, we found out that there was a gas leak somewhere. So we turned the barbecue off and disconnected it because that could be the problem.

There was still a gas leak somewhere. We sprayed all the joints with soapy water to try and see if anything popped up, but we got nothing. So what we did was we dug down underneath the gas meter. There was a fitting that hid under the pipes, which isn’t the greatest idea. We found the gas pipe. Usually when it goes from PVC to copper, that’s sometimes where it leaks. But the joint was okay.

As It Turned Out

We then went down to the back of the house. We’ve disconnected the leaking hot water system and taken it off. It was in a bad condition.We’ve dug down there too and found that the pipes were obviously chasing the wall. We could find the hot, cold, and the gas coming out. And then when we got down to the PVC pipe, it was really discoloured. Then we found a bit of sand stuck on the side.

When there is a gas leak, it makes the soil go a little bit like clay, and the clump of sand we found was a real pungent smell. So that was a really good sign that there was a leak around the fitting there. Then there were also soapy bubbles coming out of it. So we could confirm that was the joint that was leaking gas. You can see all the stainage and stuff like that.

Solution

So, what we’ve got to do was to cut that fitting out completely, reconnect it all up again, and then test it again, and hope that was the only leak. It was only a small leak, but that’s the hardest ones to find. That set us back another two to three hours on our job.

When Plumbers are Late

So when your local plumber is running late, please cut us a bit of slack. Unexpected things happen and we also have to follow these laws before sorting things out so it all takes time. We try our best to be punctual and make it to the booked appointment, but things like this are out of our control.

If you think you have a gas leak, here is a blog post and video on how to locate gas leak with everyday items. If you need any more help, please give us a call.