Do you have a leaking boiler?
Should you have a boiler that you might think is leaking, but cannot see any type of leak, what now ??
First we have to establish which kind of boiler you have, is it a combination boiler, system boiler or heat only boiler.
With combination and system boilers they work under high pressure, with heat only boilers they are sometimes are pressurised, or work under low pressure.
With all boilers that are pressurised you will have a pressure gauge suited to either leading of the boiler or close by on the pipe work.
A leaking boiler is not always a leaking boiler, I understand 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 future you will have a pricey repair bill or even the cost of a new boiler.
So why could it be important to have your boiler serviced?
The days of not bothering to service your boiler have long gone, these boilers were very basic rather than much went wrong with them, the most frequent problem was that the thermal coupling had to be changed. These boilers were not very efficient around 40% of your fuel bill went of the flue and another 60% into you're heating system.
Because the introduction of the high efficiency condensing boilers it has been very important to possess them serviced every year. These boilers are designed to give the very best performance and most of most save you on your own energy bill.
When a boiler service is carried out we are looking first to make certain everything continues to be safe, that t here are no combustion or gas leaks, checking on the flue making sure the product of combustion are exiting to the exterior as they should.
We have a combustion reading with a combustion analyser and check that the boiler when running is within the boiler makers parameters, if the reading aren't correct then we carry out further investigation to discover why, then reset.
Next we come to the most typical problem with one of these boilers.
The expansion vessel, The expansion vessel is really a very important section of your boiler and heat, if this isn't working properly you then 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's not a leaking boiler, it's an expansion vessel problem. The vessel should be checked each year and reset for your boiler to give its best performance, when the vessel it not checked, over time it will go wrong.
The Boiler Service
When you call in your neighborhood gas safe registered boiler service engineer to service your boiler, ask him to be sure the expansion vessel is checked over and reset if needed. For reasons uknown whenever a boiler service is completed, the expansion vessel is apparently left out and not checked, not all of that time period but around 80% of the time. When you browse the boiler makers instructions on boiler service they say that the expansion should be checked and reset if needed.
So what happens to the expansion vessel?
The ultimate way to describe the expansion vessel is, its such as a car tyre, over time it is going to go flat. The vessel may be the same, it is pumped up with a car pump to a Pressure that is compatible to the sort of heat you have.
If the vessel loses its pressure then it'll begin to fill with water internally, once this starts to occur most people begin to think they could have a leaking boiler.
The expansion vessel functions by taking on the expansion of the water as it heats up within you're heating system. If the vessel has no internal pressure then it will fill with water, once full, your boiler will begin to discharge water through the pressure relief valve, to release the pressure to avoid pipes bursting.