Gas Leak Detection: What To Do If You Smell Gas, and How We Can Help Afterwards

Who deals with a gas leak

In Great Britain a suspected natural-gas escape is handled by the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999. An emergency engineer attends, makes the situation safe and will isolate the supply where necessary. Repairs to gas appliances and pipework inside the property are then carried out by a registered gas engineer; the official Gas Safe Register lists every business and engineer legally permitted to do that work, and you can check an engineer’s ID card against it.

Damp, Mould & Leak Detection Ltd does not carry out gas work of any kind. We do not inspect, test, repair or certify gas appliances, meters or gas pipework, and we will always direct you to 0800 111 999 for a suspected gas escape.

Natural gas leaks and “tracer gas” leak detection are different things

People searching for gas leak detection sometimes find us because our water-leak investigations use tracer gas. It is worth being clear about the difference.

• A natural gas leak is mains gas escaping from the supply, a meter, pipework or an appliance. It is a safety emergency and is dealt with by the National Gas Emergency Service and registered gas engineers, not by us.
• Tracer-gas leak detection is a method our engineers use to find hidden water leaks. A drained water or heating pipe is filled with a harmless tracer gas; the gas escapes through the leak, rises through the floor or wall, and a sensitive detector at the surface shows exactly where. It has nothing to do with the mains gas supply.

So if your problem is a smell of gas, call 0800 111 999. If your problem is water where it should not be, such as a damp patch, a dropping boiler pressure gauge, a ceiling stain or mould that keeps returning, that is what our team investigates, non-invasively, across London and Surrey.

How we can help after a gas incident

Once the gas side has been made safe, the follow-on problems are often ours. Ground works to reach a gas main can disturb drains and water pipes; a heating system left off while a boiler is condemned leaves a cold, under-ventilated home where condensation and mould take hold; and a property that was opened up in an emergency may have hidden water damage nobody has looked at. In those situations we provide:

• Hidden water-leak detection using calibrated moisture mapping, thermal imaging, acoustic listening, tracer gas and pressure testing.
• Damp surveys that separate condensation from penetrating and rising damp, with a written diagnosis.
• Mould investigation and treatment that deals with the moisture source as well as the growth.
• Trace and access evidence and insurance-ready reports where an escape of water is involved.
• CCTV drainage surveys where the ground around a property has been disturbed.

Every investigation ends with a written report, and remedial work within our scope is quoted separately and carried out or managed by our team.

Carbon monoxide

Carbon monoxide has no smell. If a carbon monoxide alarm sounds, or people in the home have headaches, dizziness or nausea that improve when they go outside, get everyone into fresh air, call 0800 111 999 and seek medical advice. Have a carbon monoxide alarm fitted in every room with a fuel-burning appliance and test it regularly. This is again a matter for the gas emergency service and registered gas engineers, not for us.

Emergency guidance above follows the published advice of the National Gas Emergency Service and the Health and Safety Executive. This page is informational; nothing on it is an offer to carry out gas work.