Common Central Heating Faults and How to Fix Them

Posted on August 7, 2024October 18, 2024 by dev@ink-digital.co.uk

In West London, and certainly across the wider UK, central heating is the backbone of any safe, comfortable and warm property! As a result, when your central heating system starts to suffer from faults, it can make the colder months unbearable. In fact, the average temperature during the UK’s winter months is 5 degrees Celsius. Living at this temperature can hurt your joints, and your lungs and increase the chance of injury at home.

Unfortunately, there are many common central heating faults that can reduce the performance and efficiency of your system, whether that is a gas boiler or an electric one. Nonetheless, please don’t panic! Not only do we at Essential Repairs provide high-quality West London property maintenance services when your central heating is not turning on, we offer useful advice on how to fix these faults yourself in this blog post.

Read on for more.

No Heating or Hot Water

Having no heating or hot water is a serious fault in your central heating system. You’re left cold and unable to properly wash, which is problematic in any season – not just the wintertime! Rather than wrestle with this frustration hopelessly, we recommend a few fixes.

First, you should address a potentially damaged thermostat. If your thermostat is set incorrectly or malfunctioning, you won’t receive any heating or hot water at all. Thermostats can be recalibrated and replaced if necessary, a simple and non-disruptive procedure when handled by an experienced engineer.

Secondly, if you own an older boiler – perhaps one from ten years ago or more – the pilot light may have gone out. This can impact your heating. In newer models, ignition issues are a more common cause of no heating or hot water. Other times, air can be trapped in your central heating system, producing a nasty airlock. This can be resolved by bleeding your radiators or repressurising your heating system in accordance with your manual.

When none of these quick solutions turns your heating or hot water back on, and you happen to live within the West London area, it may be time to book with Essential Repairs. Professionals are well trained in dealing with the most tempestuous boilers and can replace what can’t be fixed with ease.

Your Boiler Keeps Switching Off

Worried about your central heating not turning on? Many boilers start to switch themselves off after long-term use, and this can indicate several underlying faults. The first issue could be a faulty thermostat. They can cause the boiler to switch off prematurely without any manual intervention. Another problem could be insufficient water pressure, which triggers safety shut-offs in your central heating system to preserve the condition of your boiler. A boiler’s condensate pipe can also freeze in the colder months, making it shut down completely too.

In other cases, even one malfunctioning pump can prevent water from circulating inside your boiler, causing it to overheat and switch off. Whilst it can be difficult to figure out which of these faults is switching off your boiler, we recommend taking a systematic approach to address each problem, one at a time.

As such, here’s how to fix each one!

Thermostat

Check and recalibrate the thermostat to determine whether this is the problem. If your thermostat is faulty, replace it as soon as possible.

Insufficient Water Pressure

Refill the water pressure system using the filling loop to make sure that this isn’t the issue, or, if it is, that it’s resolved and you can go back to enjoying a safe and warm home.

Frozen Condensate Pipe

It’s easy to tell whether your condensate pipe is frozen, because of its temperature and appearance. If it is, gently thaw it with warm water – not boiling, in case the pipe cracks! Insulating the condensate pipe can prevent this fault in future.

Malfunctioning Pumps

If your pump is making unusual noises, this indicates a major problem, and will be the root cause of your boiler switching off. Make sure to repair or replace the pump with the assistance of an Essential Repairs’ professional as soon as we’re available – which, for central heating faults, is immediately.

Your Radiator Makes Unusual Noises

As we mentioned briefly above, a pump making unusual or funny noises is a clear indicator that something’s faulty with your central heating system. This is the same for your radiators! Problematic radiators in the home will tend to make unusual noises, which may manifest as bubbling, banging or hissing.

These noises are often caused by kettling, triggered by prolonged limescale build-up, which also impedes the function of your radiators by making them overheat. The water inside is literally boiled, creating a major hazard for those with young children or pets that are at a level height with your radiators.

If it’s not down to kettling, then trapped air also creates unusual noises in your radiators. So does pipework that has come loose, or high water pressure. Fortunately, each of these issues can be pretty quickly resolved!

Descaling your radiators with a regular descaling solution resolves the problem of kettling, bleeding your radiators releases trapped air, and securing loose pipes with pipe clips or adjusting your water pressure resolves the last faults in an instant.

Again, if these problems happen to escalate, don’t hesitate to involve a gas-safe engineer – they nip faults in the bud before they become disastrous.

The Boiler is Leaking

Sometimes, a central heating fault is unmistakable. A leaky boiler is hard to hide and rarely goes unnoticed, although the problems triggering a leaky boiler can go under the radar for quite some time. At Essential Repairs, we often see properties afflicted with corroded pipes or joints, which cause system leaks to the pipework, and loose connections within the boiler. Your boiler relies on a complex system of connections to function well. When they become loose, leaks are bound to happen, creating water damage and even turning your central heating off!

Another cause of a leaky boiler can be a faulty pressure valve. As this blog has established, water pressure can seriously affect your boiler – whether it’s too low, or too high. Indeed, excess pressure causes the pressure valve to release water, creating persistent leaks.

Fixing a leaky boiler generally requires professional assistance, but there are two steps you can take before your Essential Repairs’ professional arrives:

1. Identify the source of the leak by checking all visible pipes, joints and connections
2. Release some water from your central heating system to lower the pressure

For help with your central heating, contact Essential Repairs

At Essential Repairs, we satisfy the central heating requirements of every domestic or commercial property in West London. Oftentimes, central heating faults do require a professional resolution to guarantee the continued function and comfort of your home. As certified, accredited, licensed and thoroughly trained experts, we provide comprehensive central heating maintenance and installation solutions, including the ability to resolve leaking pipework and carry out an expert power flush. To discover more about our plumbing and gas services, call us at 020 3813 1038 or book with our Gas Safe engineers, today.

10 Essential Tips for Regular Appliance Maintenance

Posted on July 31, 2024August 8, 2024 by dev@ink-digital.co.uk

In the UK, it’s common for homeowners to plug in their kitchen or home appliances, and just forget about them! However, the maintenance of these appliances is more important than you might think. Without the proper attention and care, they can suffer more greatly from regular wear and tear, and degrade beyond repair over time.

If you’re not quite sure how to carry out regular appliance maintenance yourself, don’t worry. At Essential Repairs, we have carried out quality maintenance services for years, and offer you our expertise in this blog. Read on for more.

1. Clean Your Appliances Regularly

The quickest way to maintain regular appliances in the home is to clean them! This includes every appliance from your microwave and toaster to your showerhead or bidet. This should be a regular programme of cleaning, too, not just a once-a-year event.

Washing machines, fridge-freezers and ovens should all be cleaned every two to four months. Your kettles should be cleaned every three months, as should your fans and light fixtures. Appliances that receive the most personal use frequently, such as your showerhead, should be cleaned at least once a month.

With a microfibre cloth and the right cleaning solution, cleaning your appliances regularly has many benefits. It prolongs their lifespan and ensures that they perform at a higher, more energy-efficient level. Dirty appliances are also more likely to become dangerous electrical hazards, because of increased dust and lint.

Home appliance maintenance doesn’t have to be challenging, and cleaning is a great starting point.

2. Check and Replace the Filters

Most home or kitchen appliances have filters to maintain proper performance by removing impurities from their systems. But, when these filters are allowed to become dirty, your appliances must work harder to complete the same jobs as before. This costs you more money on your energy bills and increases the need for repairs in future.

To maintain these appliances for as long as possible, we recommend checking and replacing these filters at a minimum of every six months. For air conditioners and furnaces, where debris builds up quickly, you should replace their filters every month. This small act of appliance maintenance keeps your home functioning as it should for a much longer time.

3. Inspect the Connections of Your Appliances

Your appliances function through a mixture of wires, cables and, for some fixed kitchen appliances, hoses.

A consistent power supply is extremely important, which is why wires and cables are needed. Yet, dishwashers and washing machines must also be able to manage flowing water, making hoses an essential part of their installation. As part of the maintenance of such appliances, you must regularly inspect these connections to ensure their safety and functionality.

Wires, hoses and cables can wear out over time and frequent use, causing leaks and reducing the efficiency of your appliances. When it comes to your washing machine, dishwasher or fridge freezer, make a habit of checking for bulges and cracks monthly. Everything should be securely connected to avoid leaks!

These inspections enable you to carry out swift repairs and replacements with the help of Essential Repairs’ experts.

4. Test Your Appliances’ Safety Features

Although you might think of appliance maintenance as a ‘cleaning’ or ‘replacement’ kind of task, this isn’t always the case. Indeed, testing your appliances’ existing safety features – of which there are guaranteed to be many – is also essential.

As an important example, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are featured in every home. You should make sure that they are working properly by pressing the test button on these alarms at least once a month. Replace their batteries on an annual basis, and keep yourself and your family safe.

5. Defrost Your Fridge-Freezer

Frost can easily build up in fridge freezers. The more frost there is, the less efficient this appliance becomes. As such, when it comes to your kitchen appliance maintenance schedule, make sure to regularly defrost your fridge-freezers as soon as the frost becomes around ¼ inch or 0.5 cm thick. Certain fridge freezers are ‘frost-free models’ – this simply means that you need to regularly inspect and clean the defrost drain to avoid clogging.

Frost can also take away some of your fridge-freezer’s storage capacity! There’s not really a way to avoid the build-up of frost over time, but through maintenance tactics such as defrosting, you can manage it properly.

6. Make Sure to Level Your Appliances

It’s essential that you make sure your fixed household appliances are level and stable during their installation. Otherwise, they can cause excessive noise and vibrations during their operation, which causes premature wear and tear. This is especially true for washing machines, dryers and fridge-freezers.

However, we admit that it can be difficult to tell if your appliances are unbalanced if you’re not a professional. Make sure that you always use a level during the installation process to avoid problems in future, and make sure the surface beneath is completely flat.

This decreases the amount of maintenance you’ll need to carry out in future, whilst enhancing the longevity and performance of your fixed appliances.

7. Always Follow Manufacturer Guidelines

Every appliance in your home, from your HVAC systems to your smoke detector, will come with a detailed user manual that contains manufacturer guidelines regarding their regular maintenance and upkeep. While we can offer tips for appliance maintenance in this blog post, we always recommend following the unique manufacturer guidelines that you have been given as closely as possible.

Read the maintenance section of these guidelines back-to-front, and follow the timelines provided for any filter replacements, cleaning and inspections required. This also means that you can maintain your warranty coverage, protecting you against the cost of any future repairs or replacements should maintenance not be enough to preserve the condition of your appliance.

8. Address Small Issues As Soon As Possible

A good rule of thumb when maintaining your appliances is to address small issues that pop up as soon as possible. For example, if your washing machine is making unusual noises, or your toaster suddenly stops working as well as it used to. Small issues such as these can escalate quickly, and increase in cost the longer you leave them be.

In sum, our tip here is to investigate, troubleshoot and resolve problems immediately!

9. Keep A Maintenance Log

Regular appliance maintenance can soon add up. It’s important to keep a maintenance log so you remember what problems you’ve addressed, and when you last maintained your home appliances. Although this might sound time-consuming, it’s very useful. You will never overlook another maintenance task, and you can refer to past maintenance activities if repairs are required.

Always record the date, tasks that you’ve performed, and what parts have been replaced after each maintenance activity.

10. When at-home maintenance isn’t enough, seek professional assistance

Sometimes, at-home maintenance tasks aren’t enough to keep your property in the best condition possible. Whenever you feel out of your depth, don’t hesitate to seek professional assistance.

For West London property maintenance that you can rely on, contact Essential Repairs as soon as possible. Our team members are easily contacted through mobile at 020 3813 1038, or our online booking system. Rest assured, we keep appliance maintenance simple. If you’re concerned about keeping your equipment or appliances in the proper condition, we look forward to offering you more personalised advice.

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Author: dev@ink-digital.co.uk