Slight hitch in the wood-burning stove plans: when our house was built in 1981, B*vis Homes helpfully ran a gas supply into the lounge for an optional gas fire, which no-one ever fitted. There's a little capped-off outlet stub projecting from the wall just above the skirting, and predictably a vertical line from this is very close to where the flue for the stove needs to go through the wall.
We think the pipe runs between ceiling and floor and drops down to the outlet, because we had a patio door installed a few years ago and we know the pipe doesn't run through the walls. I doubt it would be buried in the floor for safety reasons.
Three questions:
1) if the pipe is in the cavity between the two leaves of the wall, rather than between the dry-lining and the inner leaf, will a pipe detector still find it?
2) is there any way to detect if it's "live" without cutting it (which would then require someone CORGI registered to solder it back up again)?
3) how close can a stove flue be positioned to a live gas pipe?
The pipe could obviously be traced and capped off higher, but with the amount of replastering needed , CORGI plumbing rates etc, it makes the job unviable.