If your boiler goes wrong, it can be a stressful time. Not only do you have no heating or water, but you don’t often know what the problem is or how much the boiler repairs might cost.
It can often be difficult to find a heating engineer at short notice to help you resolve the problem.
According to a survey by Which? four out of ten boilers need repair within the first six years after installation. While some faults are simple to repair, others can be more tricky and more expensive.
If you find that you need boiler repairs more and more often, you might be better off replacing the system altogether.
There are a few common issues that heating engineers find when called out for boiler repairs. These include:
Boilers need a little electricity to spark and ignite the gas. This could be an electrical problem either with your connection or with a component inside the boiler.
Sometimes the issue is that the spark is failing to ignite the gas. If the electrical display is switching on, but the boiler won’t start up, this might be the fault. Sometimes you can hear a clicking sound as the ignition system fires.
This is an easy one to spot – there’s a puddle of water underneath your boiler. It could be pipework corroding or an issue with a joint in the pipes. You’ll need an expert to fix this one. If your boiler is over 10 years old, it could be a sign that you’re due a replacement.
Modern boilers won’t work when the water pressure is too high or too low within its system. You will probably have a display on the boiler – either a pressure gauge or a digital display with an error code.
Faulty boilers can make all kinds of alarming noises, from whooshing and bubbling sounds to banging, vibrating or whistling. Strange noises are usually a bad sign, so you need to get them checked out.
There’s nothing more frustrating than waiting in all day for a professional to do your boiler repairs, only for them to fix it by doing something totally basic.
So before you call out an engineer, there are a few things you could try to get things working again. If they work, you’ll feel like a hero!
Boiler repairs – including both parts and labour – tend to cost around £100 at least. A survey in 2020 by Which? found that the most common repairs will cost between £98 and £268 depending on the fault.
There’s no way to guarantee the performance of your boiler – like any appliance in the home, boilers do go wrong occasionally.
But you can reduce the chances of a boiler developing a serious fault by getting it serviced once a year. The engineer should diagnose any issues as part of the service and clean any boiler parts that need it.
At Bbright we have an extensive network of trusted engineers, checked and certified for your safety. If you need an urgent boiler repair contact us and we will find the right professional in your area, fast.
With a valve replacement costing around £100, if there’s a simple issue with the boiler, it can be fixed quite quickly. But if you have more than one problem in a year, and your boiler is more than 10 years old, it could be time to replace it. Modern boilers are more energy efficient than their predecessors, so will save money over time.