Having your boiler go wrong on you can pose an absolutely massive inconvenience. Notwithstanding the fact that boilers tend to go wrong on the coldest day of the year, they can feel like a substantial issue to solve and often require a lot of time and money.
While boilers can be a pain to fix, this won’t always be the case. Here, we take a look at how you can start analysing issues with your boiler, looking first at genuinely dangerous issues and then at some potentially simple fixes.
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Signs Indicating Serious Imminent Danger
Before we look at issues that you can potentially analyse yourself, we think it’s important to start with some signs that could indicate that you’re in serious imminent danger. In these cases, it’s crucial that you reach out to a boiler technician from somewhere like AbleMK straight away, so that they can deal with it in a safe and controlled manner.
Signs that your boiler could pose an issue to your health include if it’s triggering your carbon monoxide alarm, strange new smells are coming from it, or it’s started to leave sooty stains in the surrounding area. If any of these signs are present, you’ll need to get help sooner rather than later.
Check the Boiler Settings
If you’re having issues with your boiler, a good starting point is to check the settings. Especially if it’s a model that you’re unfamiliar with, you may have activated a setting or timer that has changed the way the boiler functions, potentially making it seem like there’s a fault. Consult with the user manual and go on YouTube and other sites where people post about potential solutions, to see if there’s an easy fix.
Bleed Your Radiators
If your heating isn’t working as well as it normally does, then one of the first things you should do is to bleed your radiators. This shouldn’t be too difficult in most cases, but you want to make sure you set up a small bucket and towel beneath the valve so you don’t make a mess. By opening the appropriate valve, you should be able to vacate any troublesome air bubbles from the system, allowing the water to transfer heat as intended.
Top the Pressure Up
Often, if your water pressure and heating aren’t quite at the level you’re used to, you just need to top the pressure of the boiler up a little bit. This shouldn’t be too difficult – there will typically be a set of valves that you can open and close, until the pressure gauge reads within the appropriate range again.
While this will differ depending on the model of boiler you own, in most cases it’ll be somewhere between 1 and 2 bar.
By starting with these basic areas, you should be able to fix or at least identify what’s wrong with your boiler. If you spot signs such as bad smells, soot or carbon monoxide, then it’s not worth trying to sort it out on your own – call a plumber around straight away, and consider vacating the property and turning the boiler off.
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