Boiler Servicing - Important for Landlords and Homeowners

Posted on November 16, 2008
Filed Under Make Money at Home |

Most people know the importance of servicing your boiler to maintain a healthy central heating system. One way of ensuring the user sticks to the schedule of periodic servicing is to use the service interval time controls as a reminder, to ensure they keep to the recommended servicing schedule.

Recently the talk about replacing old and inefficient boilers has grabbed many headlines. New boilers were praised as more economical and much less polluting. However, there was very little attention given to the importance of keeping these boilers in good operating order through periodic maintenance.

Regular servicing of your domestic boiler and central heating system is essential for the following reasons:

* Ensure that performance is kept stable and reliable even at peak demand levels. This way, the boiler is efficient and economical throughout the year (both at low and high load times).

* Ensure you abide by the law which requires the owner of the property to make sure the boiler and the heating system are in good operating order

Gas Regulation 36 from the Gas safety and Installation 1994 Set has the following requirements:

* The owner of the gas appliance has a duty to ensure that the appliance is kept in a safe condition which prevents the risk of injury to anybody using the property. The owner has to ensure the appliances are checked regularly every twelve months.

* The Landlord has to make sure that the gas fittings within the property are checked and kept in good and safe operating conditions in a way that prevents injuries to users of the property.

* Without predisposition to the above points, a landlord must make sure that all gas appliances (including the flues) are checked within twelve months from the point of installation and at periodic intervals of no more than twelve months apart (whether such check was done subject to these Regulations or not).

So far, it has proven to be difficult to enforce these Regulations where private households are involved. There are around 25 million private households in the UK and current evidence shows that they either forget to apply these regulations or simply delay the checks due to financial pressure. There is indication that the authorities are considering imposing penalties if neglect can be proved and which leads to accidents with damages and injuries.

There are several manufacturers of programmable controls that offer an automatic reminder facility to help keep the periodic checks on schedule. Some of them use a flag up reminder while some shut the heating system altogether after the servicing date has passed, providing a phone number for the occupant to call for an engineer.

Service Interval controls normally provide a period of warning before actually shutting down the system. During the warning period the tenants should arrange for a service call to be made for the boiler to be serviced.

According to the records by boiler servicing companies, calls for boiler servicing rise dramatically the closer it gets to the winter period, as systems are restarted after a long break for the summer. Using an automatic reminder for calling an engineer reduces scheduling crunches and un-serviced systems waiting for an engineer.

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