How we do it Video Series – Finding and Fixing a Gas Leak

This video takes you through the steps of how we find and fix a gas leak at Essendon Plumbing Services. If you can’t watch the video right now, read on below for a rundown of how big Seano sorted out this gas leak for our client.

“G’Day. I'm big Seano. I'm the old dog of the crew. I've been called out to the premises here. The client's got a very high gas bill. What we're going to do is just basically put a manometer test on the fitting line, and try and locate where this leak is.

Basically it's just a matter of isolating the gas. We undo the couplings and take the meter bend off. Spin the meter out of the way. Just so we can give ourselves plenty of room to get the digital manometer on. It seems to be all the fashion these days - All the young blokes like the digitals. I like the old school water manometer but ... What we're going to do is blow in here. We'll try and get a reading up to two and a half times operating pressure. We'll turn this cock off here and you'll be able to see a pressure drop come back through the fitting line.

As you can see it's quite a substantial drop. If that fitting line was solid that wouldn't be fluctuating at all. What we're going to do, for the sake of an argument, just going to take this coupling off and the tee piece off. We're going to turn the gas back on. It's just a soapy water solution. Dishwashing liquid's probably the best. As you can see we've got no leaks.

We've been inside the client's premises. We've soapy water solutioned underneath the gas cooker, the wall furnace. Just all the other bitty bits and bobs that he's got inside. Now we've come out to the external side of things. One of the first places to look, is we're going to check the gas on the Instantaneous and see if this nuts loose or whatever it may be. There's bubbling or this bubbling effect indicates we have got a leak on this nut.

All we're going to do now is just adjust the footies. Just a nut. Nip it up. Probably a good idea to have another set of footies behind the ball valve just to hold against it or a shifter. However you want to go just so it doesn't twist. But that's pretty tight. What we're going to do we're going to spray it again. I'm pretty confident that this will be the leak here. Sometimes if it is a tiny leak you can try and get your fingers in between the nut and the thread. Press against it to form a reservoir or a ponding of the soapy water solution. Again that will indicate another little bubble just at the back of your fingertips.

All right. What we're going to do now, we're going to go out turn the gas meter off. We're going to put the digital manometer back on. We'll test it again and see how the fitting line holds up.

As you can see that's a little bit of fluctuation there but that's pretty well solid.