Drilled for a HP and caused a natural gas explosion!

[Adokforme]

How bizzare, just how unlucky could anyone get!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly4y42vn0xo

[nowty]

I expected he drilled through a natural gas pipe but no, just a naturally occurring underground gas pocket.

[Moxi]

Doesn’t make sense tho, you drill a borehole outside the house but the photos show the house exploded up and outwards as the roof is gone and outer walls are broken and lower than internal walls. That means the gas was inside the house before ignition? So did the borehole allow gas to seep into the house and ignition was via an open flame or switch spark ?

The article just says the borehole exploded but if that was the case it would have flared rather than explode?

Moxi

[Marcus]

The borehole struck the gas pocket back in July - they evacuated everyone for while, but then they were allowed to go back to the houses. The house explosion was on Saturday - guess the gas must have continued to seep up and built up inside.

Think I'd be sleeping with a couple of windows open if i were living in that neighbourhood

[Moxi]

You would have thought the people who were managing the situation would have had gas monitors in the houses set to alarm well below the LEL ?

It sounds like someone in authority has dropped the ball and the consequences have been catastrophic for one family, not good.

Moxi

[Mart]

You would have thought the people who were managing the situation would have had gas monitors in the houses set to alarm well below the LEL ?

It sounds like someone in authority has dropped the ball and the consequences have been catastrophic for one family, not good.

Moxi

That seems so obvious and necessary, that I'm struggling to understand why it wasn't done. Shirley you're describing good practice?

As Marcus suggests, wasn't the neighbourhood concerned ..... at all, I'd have been wearing my brown trousers, just in case!

[Moxi]

You would have thought the people who were managing the situation would have had gas monitors in the houses set to alarm well below the LEL ?

It sounds like someone in authority has dropped the ball and the consequences have been catastrophic for one family, not good.

Moxi

That seems so obvious and necessary, that I'm struggling to understand why it wasn't done. Shirley you're describing good practice?

As Marcus suggests, wasn't the neighbourhood concerned ..... at all, I'd have been wearing my brown trousers, just in case!

Mart!
How did you know my middle name was Shirley
Moxi

[Adokforme]

I'm subsequently wondering if the area was previously a rubbish dump as I've not come across pockets of gas being that common close to the surface otherwise. Guess there's always the possibility of it perculating up from the depths considering how much there actually is in existance down there if the north sea is anything to go by!

[Adokforme]

Unless there's an error then according to BBC this evening the heat pump bore hole depth was 100 metres.
Would that be normal for a single residential property?

[nowty]

Unless there's an error then according to BBC this evening the heat pump bore hole depth was 100 metres.
Would that be normal for a single residential property?

According to Kensa which has a wealth of info which I used for my own water source heat pump project, sounds plausible.
https://www.kensaheatpumps.com/boreholes/

"Depths of boreholes range from around 60m to 200m."