Appliances connected and certified, leaks made safe, flues and ventilation assessed properly. In a solid-walled house the flue route decides the installation, not the brochure.
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Choosing a gas appliance for one of these houses is the easy half. The part that actually determines what can be installed is where its flue is able to terminate, and how much air the room can genuinely supply.
A flued appliance needs its flue to reach a specific kind of position, with real clearances from windows, doors, boundaries and whatever sits above it. Through double brick or sandstone that is a proper piece of work, and on a heritage frontage there is a further question about where it can reasonably come out.
Then there is the air. These houses were built to leak: open fireplaces, unsealed floors, gaps everywhere. A century later the chimneys are capped, the draughts are stopped and the windows may have been changed. The ventilation the original design assumed is often no longer there.
That matters most with unflued appliances, which put their combustion products into the room by design and rely on ventilation to make that acceptable. We check what a room actually provides rather than what it appears to.
No switches, no power points, no phone indoors. Open what you pass on the way out, turn it off at the meter if you safely can, then ring us from outside.
Open the house up, get everybody outside, and touch nothing electrical on the way past. Take the call from outdoors.
Turn the gas off at the meter if you can reach it safely. If the meter sits behind the smell, leave it and get out.
A licensed gas fitter answers when you ring us, and where the network's emergency crew is the right first call we will say so.
A flue has to terminate somewhere specific, with clearances from windows, doors and boundaries, and getting it there through double brick or solid masonry is real work.
So on a heritage house the flue frequently decides where an appliance can go, rather than the other way around.
It is worth working out before an appliance is bought, because the cheapest unit in a place it cannot vent is not cheap.
Many have been capped, taken down above the roofline, or lined for something else entirely over the last century.
A chimney built for an open fire is not automatically a flue for a gas appliance. Cross-section, condition and termination all matter and none of them were designed with gas in mind.
Whether one can serve is an assessment rather than an assumption, and that assessment is the first part of the job.
Original construction assumed air moved through open fireplaces, unsealed floors and generous gaps. That was the ventilation, and nobody thought of it as ventilation.
A century of draught proofing, replacement windows, sealed fireplaces and insulation has removed almost all of it, sensibly and deliberately.
So a room that comfortably supported a gas appliance for decades may no longer, without anybody having touched the gas at all.
They put combustion products, including carbon monoxide, into the room by design. That is how they work, and it is why they are approved on the basis of a stated room volume and fixed ventilation.
They are not permitted in a bedroom or a bathroom, and a room that has changed use since the appliance was installed is the common way that gets breached.
In a sealed heritage room the ventilation requirement is the part most likely to no longer be met.
Adding an appliance is a calculation against total demand rather than a connection. The line has a capacity and so does the meter, and on housing of this age both are modest.
The input rating on the appliance plate is the number the calculation runs on, and a photograph of it is enough to start.
Where the sums do not work, appliances starve each other, and a burner that drops off whenever somebody runs a shower is nearly always this.
Gas runs in these houses have been extended and altered by successive owners, frequently without any record of what was done or when.
So what is behind the plaster is genuinely unknown until it is tested, and testing it is part of connecting anything new.
That occasionally finds something, and when it does we tell you before doing the work rather than after.
While walls are open is the cheapest time anybody will ever have to inspect, test or replace old gas pipework. Afterwards it is a wall to open again.
In a heritage house that wall is lath and plaster rather than plasterboard, which makes the difference considerably larger.
It is worth doing even where nothing is currently wrong.
Pipe sized for the run and the load, tested to pressure, appliances installed to the manufacturer's instructions with the required clearances, flueing that discharges where it should, and ventilation suited to the appliance and the room.
In a sealed heritage house that last item is the one most likely to be the constraint, and it is a specified requirement rather than a judgement.
None of it is visible once the job is finished, which is exactly why the certificate matters.
A Certificate of Compliance is legally required for gas work in NSW and records who did the work, that they held a licence, and that it met the standard on the day.
Keep it with the property papers. It is what an insurer asks for after an incident and what a conveyancer asks for at sale, and it cannot be recreated afterwards.
On a house where the gas has been altered by several owners over a century, it is the only part of that history you can rely on.
Agreed before we start. These are indicative 2026 ranges. The Certificate of Compliance is included on every gas job and is never charged as an extra.
Any hour. Isolated and made safe first, then diagnosed properly.
What the flue route allows and what the room genuinely provides for air.
Cooktop, oven, heater or bayonet onto an existing point, tested and certified.
Priced on the route. Solid masonry sits at the upper end of that.
On every gas job. Legally required, and never charged for here.
On a suspected leak the supply is isolated first. Diagnosis and pricing come after the property is safe.
Where a flue can terminate and what the room actually provides for combustion air, checked rather than assumed.
By a licensed gas fitter, at the price agreed beforehand, working with what solid masonry allows.
Tested again on completion and your Certificate of Compliance issued on the spot.
Get everyone outside, avoid anything that could spark, and ring us from outdoors. A licensed gas fitter answers at any hour and we treat it as urgent.
Call 1300 381 569Stop 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 your way out, turn the gas off at the meter if you can safely reach it, get everyone outside, and ring from outdoors. We answer 24 hours. A gas smell is the one plumbing problem where waiting until morning is never the right call.
Because the walls are solid and the appliance is not. A modern flued appliance needs its flue to terminate in a specific place with defined clearances from windows, doors, boundaries and anything above it. In a double-brick or sandstone wall, getting there is a genuine piece of work rather than a hole saw through a stud wall, and on a heritage frontage there is the further question of where it may reasonably terminate. This is the constraint that decides most gas installations in these houses.
Sometimes, and it is worth having looked at properly rather than assumed. Many original chimneys in these houses have been capped, partially demolished above the roofline, or lined for a different purpose at some point in the last century, and a flue that looks available from inside the room may not be. It has to be inspected and proven to draw before anything is connected to it. Where it is sound, it is often the tidiest solution available.
These houses were built leaky and have since been sealed. Original construction assumed air moved through gaps, open fireplaces and unsealed floors. A century later the fireplaces are blocked, the draughts are stopped and the windows may have been upgraded. Gas appliances need combustion air, and unflued appliances particularly need room ventilation to a defined standard. We check what the room actually provides rather than what it looks like it provides.
They can be, in a properly ventilated space, and they are genuinely dangerous in a sealed one. Combustion products including carbon monoxide go into the room by design with an unflued appliance, and the room's ventilation is what makes that acceptable. In a house that has been progressively draught-proofed, that assumption may no longer hold. Carbon monoxide has no colour, no smell and no taste, so nothing warns you. It is worth having checked.
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. Keep it with the house papers. Insurers ask for it and so does anyone buying the property, and in a house of this value that matters.
A leak test and make-safe runs $200 to $450. Connecting an appliance to an existing point is $250 to $550. A new gas point or run is $450 to $1,200 depending on the route and what it has to pass through, and solid masonry is at the upper end. A flue and ventilation assessment is $180 to $350. The compliance certificate is included on every gas job.
Tell us what the appliance is and whether you are hoping to use an original fireplace. That second answer usually needs checking before anything is bought.
Flue and ventilation assessed properly, price agreed first, and a Certificate of Compliance in your hand before we leave.
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