DUBAI // The general director of Dubai Civil Defence, Maj General Rashid al Matrooshi, yesterday urged residents to fit their homes with gas detectors. He said all home owners should purchase a device that can detect the presence of gas leaks and immediately open a window if there is any suspicion of one. Detectors, however, are pricey, not widely available in the mass market and usually need to be fitted by specialised companies after manual check-ups that can take up to six hours.
Few companies offer them for homes. Most provide them as industrial solutions to monitor gas leaks in power plants and industrial-scale facilities. Gray Mackenzie Engineering Services, a Dubai-based company, fits homes with gas detectors. The company offers the Sensitron sensor model for about Dh500, which is installed by engineers with labour costs adding up to an average of an additional Dh500. The system includes a gas-leak alarm as well as a mechanism that shuts off the supply in the event of a leak. It also comes with a list of what customers should not do if a leak is detected, which includes switching on lights.
More expensive systems are available for industrial scale operations, which use a much more pricier control unit and detector. Some newer developments are being fitted with central gas-leak detectors, but they are intended to detect leaks at the central supply system rather than individual apartments. kshaheen@thenational.ae