18
Gas
news
Will your cooker
stand up to
safety scrutiny?
By Jason Treseder, ESV Gas Engineer
ESV reminds all gasfitters and electricians
of the importance of correctly securing
freestanding cooking appliances to avoid
serious injuries and to meet legal obligations.
Under the Gas Safety Act 1997 licensed
gasfitters have responsibilities to ensure installations
are left in a safe condition and all gasfitting work
complies with the prescribed standards.
Where gasfitters identify unsafe installations
they are obliged to take action to make the
installation safe. In the case of cookers this means
fitting the required stabilisation or disconnecting
the appliance. If after making a reasonable effort
to rectify the installation it is not possible to make
the installation safe, the gasfitter is obliged to notify
ESV and the gas company without delay.
Oven doors of free standing cookers open
to an ideal height for young children to climb on
and the weight of a small child on the oven door
acts as a lever that can easily cause unsecured
cookers to tip or tilt forward.
This tilting forward can cause pots on the
stove to slide forward off the front of the cooker
and potentially cause serious burns and other
injury if hot pots and pans filled with boiling water
or hot oil land on the child.
Recently ESV investigated an unfortunate
incident where a young child received serious
burns to their head and back from hot cooking
oil after climbing onto an open oven door of an
unsecured cooker that tilted forward. Hot oil also
splashed on the parent, who also received burns.
The Royal Children’s Hospital has advised
ESV that over the past 18 months there have been
four incidents of children sustaining burns involving
gas and electric freestanding cookers.
Inspection of the installation confir