Our bathroom has a very old gas heater…it has a cast iron grill and I believe a ceramic element.
Here is a picture from Pinterest of a similar one…this is not my bathroom.
You can see the gas valve control on the bottom right of the unit. You turn it and gas starts to flow. You then stick a match into the ceramic element and it lights up.
We recently had our house tented and the gas company had to come back to turn on the gas. As part of their service, they go back into the home to make sure that all gas appliances are okay to use again. When they saw the heater in our bathroom, they inspected it and tagged it, stickered it as a hazard.
I want to keep the unit there because it's a nice decorative element to the bathroom. However, I have young kids and I don't want this hazard to be there. We already removed the valve knob so that no one can turn on the gas. However, I would really love to just disconnect this appliance from the gas line altogether.
Our house has a crawl space and I can go down there to find the gas line to it.
How should I cap this off? Should I cap it off inside the appliance? Or should I cap it off somewhere in the crawlspace?
Best Answer
While in theory gas fitting isn't very different from other kinds of plumbing, the consequences getting it wrong are obviously much worse. If you care about safety enough to want to disable this heater, I strongly suggest that you also care enough to want a pro to deal with disconnection and capping of the pipe.
If there's a valve in the line as well as in the appliance, closing that is an alternative. More easily reversible, and possible to DIY ... though me being paranoid, I'd be inclined to carefully check for signs of leakage after mucking with that. (Soapy water test at least, preferably a gas leakage alarm)
Quick thought: if you ever turn that heater back on, might be worth having a carbon monoxide check done, and tuning it to minimize that.