Cooktops, heaters and gas lines installed, tested and certified. In a house extended for seventy years, we test what the appliance connects to, not just the appliance.
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In a house built as one job, the gas went in as one job. Everything is the same age, the same material and the same standard, and a plumber can reason about it as a whole.
These houses were not built that way. The orchards were subdivided from the late 1940s and the houses have been extended ever since: a bathroom, a kitchen moved, a room on the back, a heater added one winter.
Gas followed the house. A run to the kitchen, another added later for the heater, a third when the extension went on, each by a different person at a different time and to the standard of that time.
So the honest starting point is that nobody knows what is there until it is tested. That is not alarming, and most of it is perfectly sound. It is a reason to test the installation rather than to certify a new appliance on top of an assumption.
Leave the house, touch no switches, turn the meter off only if it is safely on your way, and ring from outside.
Get everyone outside before anything else. Do not touch a light switch or any other electrical fitting, and do not use a phone inside the building. If you can reach the meter safely, turn the supply off there.
Then ring from outside. That order matters more than speed does, and none of it depends on knowing what the fault is. Working out the cause is our job and it happens after the building is empty and the gas is off.
Almost no gas installation in these houses went in as a single piece of work. A cooktop arrived one decade, a heater another, a hot water unit replaced a different hot water unit, and each of those was connected to whatever was already there.
So what exists now is a sequence of decisions rather than a design, and the person who made each one could only see their part of it. That is not unusual and it is not unsafe in itself. It is a reason to check the whole installation rather than only the appliance somebody rang about.
Two things follow. The installation has to be judged as a whole rather than appliance by appliance, because the supply is shared and a decision made in 1988 constrains one made today. And the person best placed to explain it is whoever looked at all of it last, which on most of these houses is nobody.
Work done decades ago was frequently done properly against the requirements that applied then. Those requirements have moved, and an installation does not update itself when they do.
That does not make old work illegal or dangerous by default, and we are not going to tell you it does. It does mean that the moment anything is altered, the part being altered has to meet what applies now, which is why a small job sometimes uncovers a larger one.
It also explains a pattern people find frustrating. Ask three fitters across thirty years and you may get three different answers about the same run, and all three may have been right at the time. What matters is what applies to the work being done now.
Gas arrives through a single line at a single meter and every appliance in the house shares it. Adding one is a calculation against total demand rather than a connection, and the line was sized for whatever the property had at the time it went in.
An undersized supply does not stop working, which is exactly why it matters. Appliances underperform and burn poorly instead of failing cleanly, and nothing about that announces itself. So the arithmetic gets done before anything is installed, not after somebody complains the new cooktop is disappointing.
Every gas job finishes with a Certificate of Compliance, and most people file it without reading it. It is the document that says a licensed person did this work, to the standard, on this date.
Keep it with the property papers. Insurers ask for it after an incident and conveyancers ask for it at sale, both of them years later and long after the tradesperson is contactable. If a previous owner had work done and there is no certificate behind it, the question lands on you rather than on them.
If you cannot find one for work you know was done, chase it while the installer is still contactable rather than at settlement. It is a phone call now and an unanswerable question later.
Gas fitting is licensed work in New South Wales and the licence is checkable in about a minute on the Fair Trading register. Ours is NSW 368473C and it is printed on every quote we issue.
The saving on unlicensed work is small and the exposure is not. It is illegal, it voids a home insurance claim, and the person left holding that is the property owner rather than whoever did the job. Ask anybody for a number before they start.
People are sometimes surprised that a cooktop connection is more than a connection, so it is worth setting out what the visit includes.
The supply gets confirmed at the meter and the total demand calculated against what the line can deliver. The appliance is installed to the Australian Standards with the clearances its manufacturer specifies, which depend on what surrounds it rather than on what looks tidy. The installation is then pressure tested before anything is signed off, because a joint that looks right and a joint that holds pressure are not the same claim.
Only then does the certificate get written, and it gets handed over on the day rather than posted. If any of that turns up something that changes the job, the work stops and you approve a revised figure before it continues. That is the whole of it, and none of it is optional.
Fixed price agreed before anything starts. These are indicative 2026 ranges and the Certificate of Compliance is included in every one of them.
The installation pressure tested, with a written result.
Connected, tested and certified, with the paperwork handed over.
Depending on the run and what it has to pass through on the way.
Installed and certified, sized for the appliance rather than for convenience.
Legally required, and issued on every gas job without being asked for.
When it was built and whether it has been extended. That tells us how many separate pieces of work we are likely to find.
A pressure test on what we are connecting to, so nothing gets certified over an existing fault.
Installed and commissioned properly, sized for the appliance rather than for whatever was easiest to run.
Issued on the spot, and worth keeping with the house papers.
Leave the house first, then ring us from outside. Do not touch a switch on the way out.
Call 1300 381 569Get everyone out first. Do not touch a light switch or any other switch, and do not use a phone inside. If the meter is safely on your way out, turn it off. Then ring from outside. This is the one situation where doing nothing clever and simply leaving is right.
Because in a house that has been added to since the 1940s, the gas runs were rarely put in as one job. A line to the kitchen, another added for a heater, a third when a room went on the back, each by a different person at a different time. Certifying a new appliance on top of that without testing what it connects to proves very little.
The document a licensed gasfitter issues certifying the work was done to standard. It is legally required, and it is the only durable record the job was done properly. Keep it with the house papers, because insurers ask and so does a conveyancer at sale. We issue one on every gas job without being asked.
No. Gas is licensed work in NSW with no exemption for a small job or a capable owner. Unlicensed work cannot be certified and it voids a home insurance claim, which makes it an expensive way to save an afternoon.
The installation. Certifying a new cooktop on a line that is losing somewhere else achieves nothing, so we pressure test what we are connecting to. If something else is wrong you hear about it before we leave, with a price attached rather than a vague warning.
Usually, and the question is the run rather than the permission. In a house that has grown, the sensible route is not always the obvious one, and establishing it before anything is ordered is cheaper than discovering it afterwards.
A leak test on the installation is $150 to $300. A cooktop connected and certified is $250 to $500. A new gas point is $450 to $1,200 depending on the run. A heater bayonet is $300 to $600. The certificate is included in all of it.
Tell us roughly when the house was built and whether it has been added to. Those two answers say more about the gas installation than the appliance does.
Installation tested, certificate issued as standard, and the licence number on the quote.
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