Gas Fitting

Do not touch any switch or anything that could spark. Leave the building. Call FortisBC at 1-800-663-9911 from outside, then call us.

Only in a fully detached home you own and live in, with no part of it rented and nobody paid to help, and only under a homeowner installation permit you applied for. In a condo, a townhouse, a duplex or a house with a suite, no.

Only on your own dwelling, and only if you pay nobody to help and rent out no part of the house — section 24 of the Gas Safety Regulation. You still take out a permit first, and the work is still inspected.

A closed valve leaves the branch pressurised and classed as idle rather than retired. Removing the appliance is an alteration in its own right, so the line is meant to be capped, tested and covered by a permit instead.

Yes. Technical Safety BC's bulletin puts removal inside the definition of an alteration, so the installation permit has to be in place before the work begins. There is no shorter path for taking something out than for putting it in.

Look through the glass with the fireplace switched off. A small flame burning at the back of the burner in the middle of summer is a standing pilot, and that appliance will light without power. Nothing there means electronic ignition, which needs household power or batteries.

Yes. Any gas work in BC requires a licensed gas fitter, and doing it otherwise affects your insurance and your safety.

No. The wording is a fully detached dwelling. A strata townhouse shares structure with its neighbours, so it falls outside, and so does an apartment in a tower.

Usually not on its own. It becomes likely when the fireplace joins a house already running a furnace, a water heater and a gas range, or when the appliance being added is a tankless heater.

Yes. Technical Safety BC treats removal as an alteration, which calls for the venting or gas piping without appliances permit before work begins, and for a licensed gas contractor to do it.

Yes, provided it is capped or plugged at the branch and the system was left isolated and safe under the permit. The pipe itself is not the problem. An unsealed end is.

For heat in the room it is in, yes — these appliances are built to run with the blower off. Leave the room door open enough for air to move, keep anything flammable well away from the glass, which gets very hot, and have a working carbon monoxide alarm on that level.

Yes for most gas work, including new lines and appliance connections. We pull it and it is in the quote.

The permit list is installation and alteration work; routine servicing is not on it. Servicing is still regulated work, though, so Technical Safety BC's position is that a certified gas fitter employed by a licensed contractor does it.

It is not on your contractor's schedule, it is on FortisBC's. Start before heating season rather than during it.

Not by itself, but its status is unknown until someone checks it. Have it identified and tested while the wall is open rather than closing it back up on a pipe nobody can account for.

The licensed gas contractor pulls the installation permit and submits the declaration when the work is done. If the equipment carried an operating permit, the owner is the one who notifies Technical Safety BC so that permit is closed.

No. A range is built to cook, vented for cooking, and run for the length of a meal. Held open for hours in a house whose ventilation is also off, it becomes a carbon monoxide source. Technical Safety BC says the same of propane stoves and lanterns: never in an enclosed space, never as a means of heat.

Yes. An outdoor gas line means no more propane tanks, and the cost depends mainly on the distance from your existing supply.

Yes, by a licensed gas fitter. If there is no gas line at that location we will price running one.

Annually, before the heating season. It covers the burner, venting, glass seal and combustion safety.

Every home with gas appliances should have a working one. If it sounds, leave the building and call 911 from outside rather than investigating.

No. Gas work requires a licensed gas fitter in BC, and unpermitted gas work is a safety and insurance problem.

Appliance operation and combustion, venting integrity, gas pressure, leak testing on connections, and the condition of shut-offs and regulators.

Meter relocation involves FortisBC as well as us. We handle the plumbing and gas fitting side and coordinate the utility work.

At current rates gas is generally cheaper per unit of heat than standard electric resistance heating, but a heat pump changes that comparison considerably. We will run the numbers for your actual usage.

Yes, including cooking equipment connections for restaurants and commercial heating appliances.