Gas meter Earth bonding - is it required?

GeX

GeX

GeX

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Our house (built around 1905) has been previuosly rented out. On all the safety inspections that it's had done in that time it was always noted that there was no Earth bonding on the gas meter.
We currently do not have smart meters, but keep getting pestered about them. I've put off having them installed due to the lack of Earth bonding being noted. My concern there is that bonding is required and then due to the location of the meters (gas meter is in a cupboard in the lounge, electricity meter is under the stairs) we're going to end up with some awful external wiring to bond the gas meter.

Running the cables internally is possible (suspended timber floor) but a pain due to limited height in the crawl space, and the bases of the internal walls and staircase.

What I'm getting at, is there a way to determine if Earth bonding is actually required - so I can decide if I need to do anything prior to a smart meter install.
 
Short answer - yes.

No bonding is an EICR fail and potentially dangerous.

You could just get a smart electricity meter and not worry about the gas - it’s 99% of the benefit anyway.

To note, the bonding doesn’t need to be attached near the mater, it can be anywhere along the supply pipe inside or outside your house. So if the boiler or other gas appliance is closer it can be bonded there.
 
As above I believe it just has to be the gas pipe earthed rather than the actual meter itself . . . My pipe is earthed, and my meter isn't, and I've never had anything mentioned when they have inspected my meter.
 
If the pipe is bonded somewhere, the meter is naturally bonded as there should be a continuous metal pipe between the two.

If the meter is taken out (even temporarily), both sides of the pipe need a bonding conductor between the two but as above, it doesn’t matter where that pipe is then bonded to the main earth terminal as long as it somewhere and there are no other breaks in that copper pipe (e.g. plastic sections).
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
To note, the bonding doesn’t need to be attached near the mater, it can be anywhere along the supply pipe inside or outside your house. So if the boiler or other gas appliance is closer it can be bonded there.
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I hadn't realised this. I knew it had to be connected to the main earthing location at the electric meter - and had assumed that the bonding had to be done close to the gas meter too. I've read that unless the incoming main is plastic, then it doesn't need bonding either. But that doesn't help as don't know for certain what the incoming main is anyway!

Now knowing that bonding can be done anywhere on the gas pipework, I took another look at the main earthing point and noticed that there is a wire that loops up out the top, under the main fuse holder and under the floor. See https://photos.app.goo.gl/rPKJXcCyDBkvge5L7

The gas pipe for the dining room and kitchen run in this area, and the feed for the boiler (in the loft). I can't think of a reason why there'd be earthing wire going under the floor unless it's to bond the pipework. What's the easiest way to test this? I'm used to diagnosing electronics and am not an idiot with mains - but want to check, I should be able to use a multimeter and test between any gas pipe and and any earth terminal - and see a low / zero resitance reading, is that correct?
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Yes but make sure you disconnect any other potential earth paths e.g. via your boiler.
Click to expand...

Noted. Presumably the chasis of the boiler is earthed, and gas pipe will inevitably be touching that via mounts / bolts. The oven probably is too, that's a gas hob but electric fa.. oh, no it has a flexible gas pipe

Could I just knock the main breaker off and then disconnect earth that runs up into the consumer board?
 
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Disconnect the bonding from the main earth terminal and test to the end of that. Otherwise you’ll have to disconnect the Earth from everything else which may have an Earth path to it like the hob and boiler etc.
 
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None of mine is earthed but then the only copper pipe in the house is getting the gas meter to the boiler. The incoming gas is plastic.
As far as I know it's not a simple yes or no answer it depends on your setup.
 
If the incomer is plastic, you don’t need it because there isn’t a secondary path to earth which can generate a potential difference.

In my house the water is plastic all the way into the house - no bonding needed. However, the last few feet of the gas where it comes out the ground is metal - bonding needed.
 
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Yes, it's been part of gas regs for donkeys years. The weird part is, it's the gas engineers responsibility to check for it, but we are not qualified to say it's correct. And that's because you need to be a qualified electrician to say it's correct.

I had a very interesting conversation with gas safe technical regarding this last year, after doing the first gas service on a brand new property, that had no earth bonding on the gas pipe. I spoke to the site foreman who had also raised this with the sparky. Who had said the new property had other protection circuits in place that negated the need for the earth bonding. Gas safe was perfectly happy with this, as the sparky is the person qualified to say it's correct.
 
I've also been told that there's no requirement for it to be retrospectively added by a gas engineer following a gas cert inspection - I've no idea if that's correct!
 
It's flagged on a gas safety certificate in a basic pass or fail scenario. That's it. There is no enforcement unless it invalidates something you need. For example, needing a clean certificate for a house sale, or for an insurance policy etc.
 
GeX said:
So that’s saying it does need to be near the meter then!
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The gas regs lag behind the electrical regs on electrical maters.

It used to be as that diagram but was changed in a recent edition of the electrical regs so it no longer needs to be within 600mm.
 
FlyingFish said:
It's flagged on a gas safety certificate in a basic pass or fail scenario. That's it. There is no enforcement unless it invalidates something you need. For example, needing a clean certificate for a house sale, or for an insurance policy etc.
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Looking at the old certs, nothing says it has failed. There was a tick for bonding in 2014, and then in 2016 it had a cross and a note listed in the defects. Interestingly, it was the same electrician that did both inspections. This predates us buying the house by a couple of years but I'm not aware of any gas or electrical work that was done in this time.
 
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