Gas Fire - it sounds mental but.................

Thanks Sleeper12, that's a good idea. The only concern I have with that is that if I do turn the gas back on and remove the battery from the remote and it happens again (somehow) it could happen during the night and the idea of having a gas fire on full blast downstairs while we sleep upstairs gives me the heebie jeebies!!

Might have no choice but to give it a go though as it would rule out the remote.

Tidy little camera. Might give that a go.

Yes, pilot light stays lit all the time. The remote control basically just controls the "volume" knob so to speak. To get the fire going you need to press two buttons on the remote simultaneously and to turn down and off the fire you press the down button on the remote and keep it going until you hear the volume knob clicking which means it's off.

I've ordered the TP-Link camera and once it's set with the fire framed in the app for alerts when there's activity I'll turn the gas supply back on again and try and diagnose when the fire fire's up, then remove the battery from the remote and see if that stops it happening etc.

It really is weird.

That's absolutely mental Meercat, it's actually a known and documented issue!!

I found the remote system manual online and tight there in the instructions it says "Exercise caution when leaving the appliance unattended, in exceptional cases sound waves from sources other than the transmitter can cause changes in flame height adjustment" 😨

How can a product which literally controls an open fire, be considered safe enough to sell if it can be randomly set off by "other" sound waves? It's not like it's a remote control for a TV or some blinds, it controls a bloody fire FFS!!!

I could easily see a scenario where one of the kids or whatever leaves a chair or toy or school bag or some other flammable item close to the turned off fire and during the night the bloody fire spontaneously kicks off and rises to full blast (as mine has a number of times now) and the heat sets fire to the item close to the fire and up goes the house.

I honestly can't believe something as dangerous as this hasn't been recalled.

Would it still pass CE certification etc today?

Yep, that's the current state of affairs and will continue to be as even with a new remote and receiver (unless the technology has totally changed) the risk of a spontaneous fire remains.

The only thing is the way the fires are designed getting down to get into the mechanism for turning on the pilot before using the fire each time is a fairly cumbersome manual task and enough to prevent the fire from being used unless I'm the one willing to get down and get it started which is a shame as the main reason it does get used is when the kids have friends over and they want to use that room.

Safety first though.

Can't believe these are still being sold with nothing more than some small print in the manual that they can spontaneously turn on.

Supermarkets have to recall whole batches of food if there's a trace of egg or whatever in something but a spontaneously erupting open fire, no problem, keep selling them and when doing so don't draw customers attention to the risk, let them find out for themselves when they read the manual because let's face it we know everyone reads every line of every manual that comes with household devices!!