I see it all the time when called out to broken boilers that turn out to be expensive repair bills that ultimately could have been avoided if only they had had a regular check on their gas boiler.

Also, a lot of customers don’t have any form of boiler care or insurance to help cover that unwanted breakdown, so you have to wonder why they don’t employ the services of a local or national boiler servicing company to take that worry away.

Broken Boilers — Safety for you and your home

As a gas engineer of nearly 20 years the first thing I think about when servicing, maintaining any gas appliance is safety, the safety of the appliance operation has to be checked for compliance and any relevant paperwork completed. All gas appliances have safety features built in to ensure the gas supply is interrupted if a fault occurs that could lead to a potential explosion and, when checking appliances we have a duty of care to ensure that they operate correctly. As well as the appliance, although it is not mandatory when servicing a gas boiler specifically a gas tightness test is carried out in many instances to confirm the house supply is leak free and shows no signs of distress or corrosion.

Avoidance of potential issues

It sounds very basic but as well as the safety and compliance checks carried out during a boiler service, a good visual inspection of all the internal workings can quite easily unearth potential problems that left to fester can soon become major and lead to a unexpected repair bill. With a lot of gas boilers now comes a heating filter that helps protect your heating system from iron oxide otherwise known as magnetite. These filters are normally checked on annual service visits and really can give a good indication of the water quality that is running round the system that will cause you a problem if not dealt with. It is a fact that 80% of all breakdowns within the first five years of operation are caused by dirty system water. As corrosion is one of the biggest enemies in any heating system, checking the water through sampling can really help in what is needed to keep the system clean including adding any inhibitor or carrying out a power flush or magna cleanse.

Warranty compliance

Moving forward and what has been the case for the last decade, not getting your boiler serviced pretty much invalidates any warranty or insurance backed home care agreement. With the cost of a new boiler including installation averaging £2000 plus, that comes with a 10 year warranty, not having it then checked every year seems like the dumbest thing you could do if you want to throw your money down the drain by not having it serviced every year. Again something I have seen when called out to a broken boiler, the conversation goes something like this.

Gas engineer “do you have the boiler manual”

Customer “yes I will grab it out for you”

Gas engineer “you do realise this boiler should be under warranty?”

Customer “ok great”

Gas engineer “ have you had it serviced since it was installed “

Customer” no I think it’s due though”

Gas engineer “ the service record has not been filled out and the boiler was installed 4 years ago so unfortunately the warranty is void and the manufacturer won’t come out without charging you”

Customer “ oh ok, how much will the service and repair be?”

You get the gist of the conversation which didn’t need to happen if the boiler was just checked annually.

Efficiency

The longer a boiler goes without a service the more it will lose performance and efficiency. And I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that that means your gas bills bills might just start costing you a few quid more than you want. With the right type of scheduled servicing which includes a full strip down and clean you can be sure that your boiler is working at its optimal level. Stats show that as little as 1mm of scale on your heat exchanger can reduce performance by 7% so it’s easy to see why getting these things done is so important.

Regular company relationship

I think one of the most under valued parts of regular servicing is that long standing relationship between homeowner and gas engineer that helps build trust. Also on the rare occasion there is a problem under warranty you know you can get in touch quickly and get that issue resolved, sometimes without the need for a manufacturer call out. We as gas engineers really do value our customers, so rain, snow or sun we will bend over backwards to help as quickly as we can.