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Most people know the importance of servicing your boiler to maintain a healthy central heating system. One way of ensuring the user sticks to the schedule of periodic servicing is to use the service interval time controls as a reminder, to ensure they keep to the recommended servicing schedule.

Recently the talk about replacing old and inefficient boilers has grabbed many headlines. New boilers were praised as more economical and much less polluting. However, there was very little attention given to the importance of keeping these boilers in good operating order through periodic maintenance.

It important to ensure your domestic boiler and central heating system is kept in good condition through periodic servicing, which provides the following benefits:

* Ensure that the boiler delivers good output even at maximum load times. Good maintenance ensures the system is efficient and reliable throughout the year, and delivers good performance even in the coldest winter days.

* Ensure you abide by the law which requires the owner of the property to make sure the boiler and the heating system are in good operating order

Gas Regulation 36 from the Gas safety and Installation 1994 Set has the following requirements:

* It is the duty of the owner of the gas appliance to ensure that it is maintained in a safe condition so as to prevent risk of injury to any person and to ensure that the appliance is checked for safety at intervals of not more than twelve months.

* The Landlord has to make sure that the gas fittings within the property are checked and kept in good and safe operating conditions in a way that prevents injuries to users of the property.

* Without prejudice to the generality of the above paragraph, the landlord must ensure that each appliance and flue is checked within twelve months of it being installed and at intervals of not more than twelve months since it was last checked for safety (whether such check was made pursuant to these Regulations or not).

In reality it proved to be difficult to enforce these Regulations in the case of private householders. There are 25 million homes to check in the UK and the current home owners are either unaware of their obligations, forgetting to do them or delaying them until their financial situation allows them to do it. It is expected that penalties would be imposed if an accident occurs which involved damage or injury and neglect can be proven.

There are several manufacturers of programmable controls that offer an automatic reminder facility to help keep the periodic checks on schedule. Some of them use a flag up reminder while some shut the heating system altogether after the servicing date has passed, providing a phone number for the occupant to call for an engineer.

Automatic scheduling mechanisms actually provide a short grace period beyond the scheduled service if one was not carried out. It is, however, imperative that the owner of the system or the tenant arranges for a service engineer as soon as possible before the system actually shuts itself down.

According to the records by boiler servicing companies, calls for boiler servicing rise dramatically the closer it gets to the winter period, as systems are restarted after a long break for the summer. Using an automatic reminder for calling an engineer reduces scheduling crunches and un-serviced systems waiting for an engineer.

Filed under: Home Business