Camberwell is in the City of Boroondara, and the blocks around the Junction, Burke Road and the station carry a good number of units, townhouses and low-rise apartments alongside the freestanding houses. Gas in a multi-dwelling property behaves differently to gas in a single house. There is more than one meter, the line into your place is not the only line in the building, and turning the gas off is not always something you can do without affecting a neighbour. Prime Plumbing & Gasfitting is a Type A gasfitter, BPC #103414, and issues a Compliance Certificate on the repair.
Quick answer: if you can smell gas in a Camberwell unit, do not go hunting for the right meter first. Get out, get the neighbours out, and from outside call 000 if the smell is strong or the emergency number printed on your gas bill. The distributor makes the building safe. Prime Plumbing & Gasfitting then handles the licensed repair on the property side and issues the Compliance Certificate. BPC #103414.The dividing line on any gas installation is the meter. Everything up to and including it belongs to the gas distributor, and a leak on that side is theirs to fix at no charge to you. Everything downstream of it belongs to the property, and that is licensed gasfitting work.
In a single house nobody argues about who owns the pipe. In a block it is the first thing to sort out, because it decides who signs off the job. We trace the run, identify the meter feeding the dwelling, and put in writing which side of the lot boundary the fault sits on. If it turns out to be common property, that goes to the owners corporation with the evidence attached rather than being quietly repaired and invoiced to whoever happened to make the call.
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Each meter in the bank gets matched to its dwelling before we isolate, by tracing the outlet or by testing under controlled conditions. It takes a few minutes and it avoids cutting the gas to a neighbour who has no idea why it went off.
Risers, ducts and meter cupboards normally need the building manager or the owners corporation to open up. Where that access is needed we tell you who to ask and what to ask for, so the visit is not spent standing in a car park waiting for a key.
The Compliance Certificate for the gasfitting work goes to whoever engaged us, with BPC #103414 on it. If the work touched common property the owners corporation will want it for the building records, and we can send it to both. Photographs of the fault and the repair come in the same PDF.
In a block, a strong gas smell is everybody's problem, not just yours. Get your own people out, knock on the doors either side on the way past if you can do it without holding yourself up, and call from outside. 000 if it is strong, otherwise the emergency number printed on your gas bill. Energy Safe Victoria's gas emergency line is 132 771. The distributor makes the building safe at no charge.
A smell in a stairwell, a garage or a meter cupboard is not necessarily from the nearest dwelling. Gas travels along whatever path it is given. We check the shared spaces and the meter bank as well as the place that reported it.
Correct meter identified, that dwelling's supply isolated, the rest of the building left running. Then the supply gets split into sections and tested until the fault is placed.
If the fault is inside the lot, we quote it and repair it. If it is in a riser, a shared duct, or on the network side of the meter, it goes to the owners corporation or the distributor with the findings written down, because it is not the lot owner's to pay for.
Supply restored, retested, appliances relit and checked. Compliance Certificate issued to whoever engaged the work, with a copy for the building records where common property was involved. One PDF.
If there is an active smell, call whoever gets someone licensed there fastest and sort the invoicing out afterwards. For a non-urgent fault it is worth knowing first: inside your lot it is yours, and in a riser, a duct or the meter cupboard it is normally the owners corporation's. We can attend, find it, and put in writing which of the two it is.
Not always the one with your unit number on it, which is exactly why we check instead of assuming. Labels get swapped during building works and never corrected. We confirm it by tracing before anything is isolated.
Normally no. The point of identifying the right meter is that only one dwelling's supply comes off. Where a shared section genuinely has to be isolated, that gets arranged with the building manager rather than done on the spot.
Possibly not. Shared garages often hold meters, a riser, or a hot water unit, and the smell is strongest near the source rather than near whoever noticed it. It gets treated as a building issue until the trace says otherwise.
Yes. The Compliance Certificate is issued to whoever engaged the work, and we can send a copy to the owners corporation or the building manager for the records. Worth doing whenever the work touched common property.
$300 to $500 + GST for a typical residential detection in Camberwell, and a unit is not automatically dearer. What adds time is meter identification and waiting on access to common property, so if either looks likely you will hear about it before we start rather than on the invoice. Price in writing on site.
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