Should conventional floor standing gas boilers with outside flue be serviced each year? They seem to come each year and just hoover the inside and clean it, check things over etc, never anything wrong with it. Is this necessary? Or is it just a long check list of tick boxes to make it a look like they are doing a lot. Bit like these 112 point car checks etc
To some extent it depends on who *they* is.
If it's BG, then you could almost certainly get the same level of attention elsewhere at rather less cost.
A good benchmark is to check the manufacturer's recommendation for servicing. They may recommend annual cleaning. There is a school of thought that says that if it isn't broken, don't fix it. There is no point in dismantling things for the sake of it, because especially components with seals and gaskets are likely toi require new ones with no good reason to have removed the part in the first place.
With an older boiler, especially a conventional flue, it is prudent to at least have a combustion gas analysis test done. However, BG have gained a reputation for doing this only and not doing a complete "service" - hence customers feel cheated. Justifiably so because a flue gas analyser can be bought for around £200. You could buy one of those and pay for it in a couple of years.
Really the manufacturer should have an official service schedule and whoever services should follow that.
.andy
To email, substitute .nospam with .gl
Yes, do it. I once failed to arrange an service, which meant the period between services was actually 24 months. The build up of carbon was such that the gas usage was very high, and flames were getting close to parts they shouldnt. When the corgi opened it up, i was stunned at the build up. i hate to think what a further 12 months could have produced.
ZD
If your boiler is producing soot, then the gas/air mix is not set up correctly and you are not getting good efficiency from the system.
Bob
In my experience, when they soot up, they do it quite suddenly. Something (e.g. dust which hasn't been cleaned out) gets somewhere where it causes part of the burner to burn badly and produce perhaps only a tiny amount of soot. Some of this will fall off and get sucked into the air intake making the situation worse. The soot being laid down starts reducing the draft, causing further incomplete burning and rapid sooting up. I've seen this happen withing a few days.
So basically I see it as a random instantaneous event, whose probablity of happening increases over time as dust builds up. I don't think you can meaningfully say "my boiler takes x years to soot up".
Was this on a conventional or balanced flue boiler? Sounds like it was drawing in pretty dirty air from somewhere - or was badly adjusted in the first place. Natural gas is pretty clean burning and shouldn't on its own cause any sooting up in only a year.
Stripping a boiler for *unnecessary* cleaning isn't IMHO a good idea. Threads etc can be stripped and bits lost.
Just to annoy IMM again, I checked my BE balanced flue boiler one year after it was installed, and it was like new. So I sort of forgot about it. Some *twelve* years later it sooted up without being touched in the interim, and as you said it went from normal to sooted up in a couple of days. A good clean, and it's been fine since.
I noticed the burning sound was different when it started to soot up, and the inspection window showed some yellow on the flames, so my 'service' consists of a regular visual and aural check.
These sort of boilers are now becoming very much the exception. They really do need to be checked annually.
The use of the combustion analyser together with observation of the flame picture (see FAQ) is a START on the process of checking. I beleive BG only strip down the boiler and do a 'proper' service when the CO/CO2 ratio exceed 0.8%. I'd be looking to do this is it were 0.3% or more. [Even brand new boilers may have 0.1%]
Also to be checked are the following (which might be fairly trivial). General condition. Operation of controls. Thermostats get tired and overheat the boiler. Looking for leaks (water). Looking for spillage of flue gases at the draught diverter. Checking the gas valve drops out in under 60s from the pilot extiguishing. Checking that the dropped out gas valve actually cuts the gas 8-). The burner pressure, this can drift with age. ...and perhaps if things are not as they should be... inlet gas pressure. Determining the gas rate of the burner. Performing a flue flow test with smoke pellet.
The manufactuers may specifiy that the burner needs to be cleaned each year however in general the instructions for this sort of boiler have been long lost.
HTH
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