A local engineer has been praised for detecting a substantial gas escape at a home in West Yorkshire during a routine installation.
Liam Hall, Gas Engineer for online electricals retailer AO.com, was installing a new gas hob for Mr and Mrs Mary Lawson, who live in Fagley, Bradford, when he discovered the leak inside their property.
Liam was carrying out routine tests in the properties cellar when he noticed a substantial drop in the gas readings he was recording, and informed Mrs Lawson that there was a suspected gas leak somewhere in the property.
Having only an allocated timeslot to complete the installation, he would usually have to return to complete the job once the issue had been resolved and, in the meantime, the customer would be left with her gas supply disconnected and unable to use her gas appliances.
As Mrs Lawson’s husband is vulnerable, this would have proved a major inconvenience for the couple. Liam, who is based at AO’s Cross Green depot in Leeds, said: “As soon as Mrs Lawson told me about her husband, I knew I had to get the problem sorted for them. I promised to get the leak sorted, no matter how long it took me.”
Liam’s first port of call was to inspect some old lead piping in the property, but this didn’t resolve the leak. Mrs Lawson then informed him that she could smell gas in the kitchen and that it had recently been installed. He said: “I pulled out the oven and checked the new pipe work and the crimp fittings hadn’t been tightened properly. This meant that the fittings were spinning around and weren’t sealing as they should.”
The engineer spent over two and a half hours making sure that the gas leak was resolved for the couple by replacing the original piping.
Mrs Lawson said: “Liam is one of the best gas engineers to have worked at my home. He was compassionate about the situation and made sure that both me and my husband had no further inconvenience – I’m so grateful and I can’t thank him enough.”
Lynne Wood, Director of Service Delivery at AO Logistics, said: “All of our Premier Installations Engineers are Gas Safe registered and are fully trained to detect potentially dangerous leaks in a customer’s home. We’re all about making decisions that our mum would be proud of and the level of care that Liam showed to Mrs Lawson and her husband embodies this perfectly. We’re so pleased to have been able to help them during what must’ve been a scary situation.”