Our boiler troubleshooting checklist is a useful tool in case you find yourself with a broken boiler.
A residential heating system is a complex appliance. Your gas boiler is no exception. A boiler uses hot water or steam to heat the home, thus there is an additional component – water – in the process. Your gas boiler is a machine, hence, expect that it will break down at some point. There are a number of things that can cause the most common boiler problems. While it is always best to get a professional to do a boiler repair, some boiler problems are very basic that you can fix it yourself. More complicated issues will need more expertise, but you’d be surprised how well you can troubleshoot a gas boiler by yourself.
Here’s our boiler troubleshooting checklist to help you.
Try these tips first, and you may not need to call a gas safe registered engineer.
- Make sure that the following are turned on: gas supply, electrical supply, water supply. You’d be surprised at how many times our engineers had to go out and visit a customer and it turns out the water supply was accidentally turned off.
- Check the thermostat and the timer and make sure that they are both on.
- Check the pressure gauge. The water pressure ideally needs to be at around 1 bar. Read more about what to do if the boiler keeps losing pressure.
- If your system has a permanent pilot light, check to see that it has not gone out. Know more about what to do if the pilot light keeps turning off.
- Try turning the heating up and test if the temperature goes up.
- Try turning the electrical supply to your boiler off then turn it back on. The switch is usually located near the boiler or in the airing cupboard.
- Check if there is a customer- operated reset button. This one should not need you to open any casing and is usually available for most modern boiler models.
- Check if you have frozen condensate pipes. If your pipes are frozen, you can easily thaw them yourself.
- Check your other gas appliances and see if they are malfunctioning too. If they are, you need to call a professional.
