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Common boiler problems

There is a boiler in almost in every house in the UK.

A boiler breakdown is an expensive inconvinience for any home owner. We all expect it to work when we need it. As the source of hot water and central heating, a functional and running boiler is essential but we usually don’t give too much care and attention to it until it breaks down. And what if it does? This can be a stressful time our engineers are here to help. Don’t worry, it is a worrying time for anybody.

Here are some common boiler or central heating faults.

Noises coming from an appliance

These include whistling, clanging, gurgling, thudding and kettling. If you can hear noises coming from your boiler, this could be due to trapped air inside the system or the appliance itself. If you feel confident, bleed your radiators and see if that helps or resolves the problem compleately. Accumulation of limescale inside the pipework or appliance components can also produce these noises. To solve this, you will need a magnetic filter and scale inhibitor fitted.  There may be other causes such as blockages or a frozen pipe, for example. If you have a condensing boiler it produce condensate acid which is  very often transported to an outside drain. Because of its location it faces the risk of freezing. Condensing pipe is usually white and 22mm in diameter, located under the boiler and terminated to an outside drain. Simply put some foam pipe insulation on it. This may help your boiler to function correctly.

cold radiators

If convenient, we advise bleeding radiators first, especially if they feel cold only at the top. Trapped air in radiators does not let water heat them properly. Bleeding should resolve the issue.

Another common issue is sludge in the system. If your radiators feel cold at the bottom, they may be full of sludge and debris. The solution to this is a chemical cleaning of the installation – a power flush. Let a professional carry this work out for you. After the work has been done, your hot water will have a good flow throughout the system and your heating should work much better.

Another issue is when one radiator is colder than another. They may need balancing. This involves adjusting radiator valves so that water can better flow to the rads which feel colder and have less flow where you they felt too hot before.

No hot water

There could be many reasons why a boiler does not heat up water. One of then is low pressure. Another one relates to scale in the plate exchanger. There could be a broken fan. There could be a broken flow switch or diverter valve. There are many other possible reasons for malfunction. Before you call your plumber, try to  reset your boiler. Sometimes this helps. However, we recommend calling a Gas Safe registered engineer to look at it for you as work carried out on gas appliances needs to be done by a professional tradesperson.

No heating

A boiler may work as it should for hot water demand but still not heat up your radiator. Check the thermostat first. Try to increase your room temperature by turning the thermostat to a higher setting. Are the batteries still working? Due to summer time heating settings could be deactivated on the boiler so check if not. There may be also a boiler pressure problem. If you have motorised valves fitted on the installation, they may be faulty. We can provide central heating fault finding in Hertfordshire and surrounding areas.

The boiler keeps switching itself off and on sometimes

First on the list of likely issues is the pc board. This may be quite an expensive thing to buy. Sometimes a boiler goes crazy and switches on and off even if there is no call for heat or hot water.

Since a boiler has some safety features to stop it from being damaged for diferent reasons it may go on and off again for a short time. A good example of this situation is overheating. When you open your tap for hot water, it heats it for a short period of time and then goes off. This is because the appliance boiler is designed to switch itself off automatically to prevent more damage in the event of a problem.

A leak from the boiler

A leaking boiler is the last thing you want in your house and can cause flooded wooden floors or carpets if are not in when the leak occurs.

A common cause of boiler breakedown is a broken seal or boiler component such as an airvent, pump or (often) diverter valve. If an appliance has not been serviced regularly then the worse cause may be the main heat exchanger leaking. This is very expensive to replace and in most cases it is better to invest in a new boiler rather then spend money on an old one to be repaired.

Our engineers are gas safe registered and are happy to assist with your boiler  breakdown. Please feel free to  contact us today.

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Gas Boiler & Heating

Installation and repair.

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Gas Boiler & Heating Ltd
104 Suncote Avenue
Dunstable
LU6 1BW

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