BC requires a Red Seal certified gas fitter for any gas appliance install, any gas repair, and any change to a gas line. Working on gas without that certification is a code violation, it voids your insurance, and it puts people in the building at risk. We keep a certified gas fitter on staff rather than subbing the gas side to whoever is free that week.

New gas appliance installs. Range, dryer, water heater, fireplace, outdoor BBQ connection, patio heater, firepit, standby generator. Every one of them needs correctly sized supply pipe, a shut off valve within reach, pressure regulation where the appliance calls for it, a leak test before commissioning, a City permit, and FortisBC coordination where the service side is involved.

Gas line changes for renovations. A kitchen remodel that moves the range. A new island with a gas cooktop. Gas run out to a patio for outdoor cooking. Swapping electric appliances for gas. Each one changes the gas demand on the house, so the supply piping gets re sized, new shut offs go in, and the routing has to be code compliant before it gets closed up.

Leak detection and repair. A smell of gas near an appliance or along a run. We isolate the line, find the leak with soapy water and an electronic detector, cut out and replace the failed section, then pressure test before the line goes back into service. If you can smell gas, do not stay in the house. Call from outside or from a neighbour’s.

Service line replacement. The gas service from the meter to the house is failing. This is rare, and when it does happen it is usually a very old galvanized service line. The public side gets coordinated with FortisBC and the house side is ours.

Everything goes through a City of Vancouver permit, gets leak tested before activation, and finishes with a certificate of work in your inbox.

What a new appliance install actually involves. Connecting a flex line is the last step, not the job. First we verify the existing service capacity, because most Vancouver homes run a half inch gas service off the meter, which handles typical residential demand but can fall short once you stack a range, a dryer, a tankless and a BBQ on the same house. Then we trace the current routing, pick the appliance location, and plan the run. Black iron goes in for the hard piped section, a CSA certified flexible connector lands at the appliance, a brass shut off valve sits within reach, and an appliance regulator gets added where the unit needs lower pressure than the supply. The whole run gets leak tested to BC code before the gas comes back on and before the appliance is commissioned.

What a leak call actually involves. The line gets isolated at the meter valve or at the appropriate appliance shut off. We confirm at the meter with soapy water whether the leak is on the FortisBC service side, because if it is, it is their repair and not ours. If it is on the house side, an electronic gas detector plus soapy water on every joint, fitting and section of the suspect run pins the failure. The bad section comes out, new black iron with the right fittings goes in, the repair gets pressure tested to code, and the detector goes back over the rest of the line to confirm nothing else is weeping. A City inspection closes it out and a certificate of work follows.

The failures we find most often are not exotic. Flare fittings on flexible appliance connectors lead the list by a wide margin. After that it is corroded threaded connections on older black iron, then failed appliance shut off valves, and occasionally a hairline crack in a galvanized service line on a pre-1970 property.