Leaking Boiler
Do you have a leaking boiler?
Assuming you have a boiler that you might think is leaking, but cannot see any form of leak, what do you do?
First we need to establish which kind of boiler you have, is it a mix boiler, system boiler or heat only boiler.
With combination and system boilers they work under ruthless, with heat only boilers they're sometimes are pressurised, or work under low pressure.
With all boilers which are pressurised you will have a pressure gauge fitted to either leading of the boiler or close by on the pipe work.
A leaking boiler is not always a leaking boiler, I know that might sound strange, but it's true. All these boilers working under high pressure should have an expansion vessel fitted either internally or externally, that is normally the reason for a leaking boiler.
So how do we resolve the leaking boiler problem?
First you ought to have your boiler serviced each and every year without fail, if you decide not to have your boiler serviced then at sometime in the foreseeable future you will have an expensive repair bill or even the cost of a new boiler.
So why is it important to have your boiler serviced?
The times of not bothering to service your boiler have long gone, these boilers were very basic rather than much went wrong using them, the most typical problem was that the thermal coupling needed to be changed. These boilers weren't very efficient around 40% of one's fuel bill went of the flue and another 60% into you're heat.
Because the introduction of the high efficiency condensing boilers it's been very important to have them serviced every year. Extra resources|Find more info are designed to give the best performance and most of all save you on your own energy bill.
When a boiler service is completed we have been looking first to be sure everything is still safe, there are no combustion or gas leaks, checking on the flue making sure the merchandise of combustion are exiting to the exterior as they should.
We take a combustion reading with a combustion analyser and check that the boiler when running is within the boiler makers parameters, if the reading are not correct then we carry out further investigation to discover why, then reset.
Next we arrived at the most frequent problem with these boilers.
The expansion vessel, The expansion vessel is really a very important section of your boiler and heat, if this is not working properly then you will have problems. The most common problem could be the lack of system pressure, a lot of people describe this as a leaking boiler.
In fact it isn't a leaking boiler, it's an expansion vessel problem. The vessel must be checked each year and reset for your boiler to give its best performance, once the vessel it not checked, as time passes it will go wrong.
The Boiler Service
When you contact your local gas safe registered boiler service engineer to service your boiler, ask him to make sure the expansion vessel is checked over and reset if needed. For reasons uknown when a boiler service is carried out, the expansion vessel is apparently left out rather than checked, not all of the time but around 80% of the time. When you read the boiler makers instructions on boiler service they state that the expansion ought to be checked and reset if needed.
So what happens to the expansion vessel?
The easiest way to describe the expansion vessel is, its just like a car tyre, as time passes it is going to go flat. The vessel is the same, it is pumped up with a car pump to a Pressure that's compatible to the type of heating system you have.
If the vessel loses its pressure then it will start to fill with water internally, once this starts to occur most people start to think they may have a leaking boiler.
The expansion vessel works by taking on the expansion of the water as it gets hotter within you're heating system. If the vessel does not have any internal pressure then it'll fill up with water, once full, your boiler will then start to discharge water through the pressure relief valve, release a the pressure to stop pipes bursting.