Often heating issues can either be resolved fairly easily or if a breakdown does occur, then life can be a lot easier if a little preparation has been made before hand.
Understand how your heating operates!
Heating systems can vary – and this post isn’t a guide to them all. But having a basic understanding can really help. Some heating systems and boilers use a hot water cylinder. Others have a combi boiler and there is no hot water cylinder. If you have a combi boiler then your radiators are a sealed system that needs to be pressurised. Look for the boiler pressure gauge – why not check it regularly and then you’ll spot when something is abnormal.
Check settings and valve positions
Are your radiators cold? Is the heating not coming on? Is the water cold? Check and understand your settings, thermostats and timers. Also, check if radiators are an even temperature all over or not. If they’re warm at the bottom and cool at the top then that usually means they need bleeding. Check your radiator TRVs (if fitted) – these are a thermostatic device and they can be set to off, max or a range in between.
Don’t Run Out of Oil!
Nearly empty – reorder! 
Tank almost full.
If you have an oil boiler (more common within rural properties), then monitor the amount of oil remaining in the tank and reorder in plenty of time. We once had a tenant who reported a boiler breakdown several times during the course of their tenancy and everytime it was due to them running out of oil! They were very stressed, had no back up plan (ie, no plug in heaters, no firewood) and when they realised the cause, they had to wait a week for a delivery of oil. Not nice – most of our properties (with oil boilers) have a radio/sonic metering system. But if not, the tank itself should have a sight glass which tenants should be familiar with.
Electrical Stuff
Your boiler is also an electrical appliance. And it also has a lot of water and pipework flowing in and around it. Occasionally, water leaking on electrical aspects will trip off the circuit breaker and/or an RCD. Check your circuit breakers and report any problems. If you cannot see an obvious problem with your boiler or any other aspects then it is permissible to attempt to reset the breaker. However, if it trips again immediatly then leave it! Further diagnosis will be required. Sometimes we get reports of an electrical fault and actually the problem is leaking pipes and plumbing – so getting the right tradesman is crucial. This is one of the reasons why we ask tenants to report problems using our online diagnosis questionaires.
Don’t be cold! Have a back up plan!
Taking some measures and precautions before problems arise is a smart thing to do. We’ll discuss in the next post.
