Servicing your own gas boiler

Everyone with a certificate was taught by an experienced person and has done the job, or a very similar one, many times during training. This is (in theory) why gas fitters take on apprentices, purely to ensure that they get "hands on" training. I watched it work when a gas fitter was servicing my boiler recently. The apprentice did the work, while the gas fitter watched him *very* carefully, and made mostly polite recommendations while he was doing it.

The difference between that and what you are proposing is that if you get the aircon repair wrong, then you end up being a bit too warm in your car in the Summer. If you get a gas boiler repair even slightly wrong, you and your family can end up dead or homeless many months later as a result of the explosion and subsequent fire.

Also take note that even qualified people get it wrong on occasion, but, as they are "professionally qualified", they should have adequate insurance cover against any problems, as insisted on by their professional bodies.

Charge me for 2 cars and a trailer when I was towing my race car to an event.

I wonder what they charge those big car transporting lorries? ;-).

Tim

I don't know about that particular boiler, but the servicing instructions for most boilers I've looked at have a bit more to then than simply sticking a probe in the flue gas!

Even then, what he said didn't make sense. I think it was the second number on his display which he said was significant, and needed to be below '4' -but the only non-zero digit displayed was a 7!

Good point. Sadly, it was about 7 AM on a Sunday and the toll booth was unmanned so there was no-one to remonstrate with. Gawd knows how it recognised that there were two cars, but £11 popped up on the payment display. I had to pay with a CC - Gawd knows what would have happened had I not had one. Looking at the price table on their website, £11 doesn't make any sense; perhaps prices have gone up since I did this. Not that I care, because I'm never using it ever again.

In article , Tim Watts scribeth thus

Well Heres a Yay sayer;)..

There are some very good ones. We use a man called Mick Merry up here in Cambridge for our rented houses boiler inspections and servicing. He is very knowledgeable and through, and also reasonably priced and has taught me a lot about Gas boilers and the way they work, common faults and problems etc.

If anyone is looking for someone to do this in the area he's got a website here. No connection apart from being a very satisfied customer:)..

I think it comes down to the fact that DIY-ers will only undertake work on their boilers if they have at least half a clue. Many of these will have educated themselves by studying the boiler maker's literature and other on-line sources and - dare I say it - by spending a lot of time in this Newsgroup!

I didn't, but your initial response was still apt!

Indeed. Many people seem to confuse "regular" with "frequent". Halley's comet is fairly regular - but every 75 years or so is probably a bit

I'd love to know how 'they' know who had been 'meddling'.

It might be sort of obvious by poor workmanship still showing after an explosion - or may not.

Quite. Of course there are those who'll fiddle with things when they don't know what they're doing - and what makes many seem to think a bit of poorly worded legislation will stop this? And then we have the main source of dangers from gas - cowboy tradesmen. Who will care even less about the law.

CCTV, I'd suspect.

You must (by law) be "competent" to work on gas systems.

Turning off the gas worries me. If you are turning off the gas, that suggests you may be planning to open the gas pipes. If you do that, I know you have to a) flush any air out of the pipes; b) make sure the system is entirely gas tight (which usually involves pressurizing the system, turning off the gas, and checking that - with a manometer - that the pressure doesn't drop).

If you aren't going to open the pipes, all of this is unnecessary.

Not quite. It is not merely necessary for you to deem yourself competent; you actually have to *be* competent. The difference is that if the house blows up, it is not enough to say you thought you were competent. You have to show that did everything according to the regulations (which, given the house has blown up, will probably be impossible).

There is only one thing you can be sure of when a job is done to the "regs", it is done to the minimum standard in force at the time. A DIYer is quite likely to exceed the minimum standard.

Unless you've uploaded your pipe size calcs, benchmark certificate and manometer and flue gas analyser readings to off-site backups.

Owain

It has to be a lot wrong to pose a risk. Even gas boiler enclosures are designed to contain an explosion within the boiler.

A competent DIYer who checks for leaks before and after any work will pose a lesser risk than many professionals.

So you can't cite it?

With ANPR. It saw two different number plates. Recommended cure - Gaffer tape over the plates of the car on the trailer, which shouldn't be legible anyway, to comply with the law governing such matters. Of course, if they do it by having someone looking at a screen in a control centre, that won't help. Alternatively, avoid going through the unmanned booths if possible.

Note that what is *accepted* and *what the law prescribes* aren't the same thing.