The gas cylinder in the kitchen: the smell, the soap test, and the two habits worth the whole page

A cooking-gas install is a pressurised system with one weak link - the hose and its clips - and the household that respects that fact never thinks about it again. The page below is the whole of what respect looks like: four checks, one storage rule, and the emergency sequence that is the opposite of every instinct.

The four checks, quarter by quarter

• Soap, on the joints, with the burner on: the honest leak test - washing-up liquid and water, brushed over the regulator's neck, both hose clips and the cylinder's valve spindle - and the bubbles are the answer. A candle or a lighter is never the leak test; it is the consequence. And a smell of gas in the room with nothing bubbling is the hose breathing or a valve not shut: open the window, and the sequence below applies to a smell you cannot place.
• The hose itself: rubber gas hose hardens and cracks from kitchen heat and time, and the "it still smells fine" hose is the one the repair shop replaces by the metre without being asked. The mark on the hose (a gas-rated line, the standard's print) is the purchase's only honest label, and the spring clips - not cable ties, not friction - are the fittings. If the hose touches the cooker's back where the heat lives, it is the length of the failure; reroute or shorten it to clear.
• The regulator and the knob: the correct regulator for the cylinder's valve (the shop's fitting, not the neighbour's), the valve off at the cylinder when the burner is off at the end of cooking - the two-switch habit, and the one that ends more incidents than any other, because a leak with the cylinder on is a leak with no expiry.
• Swap day, three minutes: the new cylinder's seal ring and the smell of the first light-off - the first flame after a change is the test of the seal, and the "it puffs then lights" is a leak into the housing; if it puffs big, stop, and the dealer's man is the fix. The cylinder stands upright, on a floor that drains, not in a cupboard that traps.

Storage: the down-and-away rule

LPG is heavier than air: a leak does not rise, it walks the floor, finds the drain, the doorway's gap, the pit below the kitchen - and waits. So the spare cylinder lives outside, upright, in shade, with its cap on and a floor that lets it go away from the house rather than under it; and a kitchen where the cylinder must live gets the ventilated cabinet and the floor-level vent, the two features the gas installer's own rulebook already requires. The desk will say the flat-out version of the industry's advice plainly: a cylinder in a room that sleeps people is a decision about what happens at 3am.

The emergency sequence - no switches

Smell gas: hands off the electrics (a switch's spark is the ignition nobody thinks about), open everything that can open, kill the cylinder's valve if the walk to it is comfortable, leave and let the room air, and call - the supplier or the fire line - from outside. A fire at the cylinder: if you can shut the valve, you can put it out; if you cannot, leave and let the gas burn out in the open, because a capped leak finding an ignition is the second event no extinguisher answers. These are not dramatic sentences; they are the two lists the whole industry runs on, and they are why this page exists.