Boiler Maintenance Checklist

Boiler maintenance is very important to the smooth, economical, safe running of your gas boiler and central heating system. Thankfully, gas boilers are generally very low maintenance, requiring little more than the recommended annual service and safety check.

The inner workings of a gas boiler is a mystery to most of us. We know that our boilers should be checked and serviced yearly, but often don’t know what that service should entail. Following is a basic checklist of what should be covered in an annual boiler service.

1. To begin with, you should be sure that the engineer carrying out boiler maintenance is competent – and legal. By law in Ireland anyone who works on gas appliances should should be registered with the RGI. At Gas Services all of our engineers are RGI registered and qualified to a high standard.

2. A boiler service begins with the engineer performing a visual check of the boiler. The boiler’s position should comply with all manner of regulations to ensure its safety.

3. Following the visual check should come the pre-service check. The boiler maintenance engineer should switch the boiler on to check for any obvious faults or system failure.

4. Next, the boiler maintenance engineer will look inside the boiler. They will remove the casing and check the main components – the burner, the heat exchanger, the seals and the fans, amongst others – to make sure they are clean and undamaged. Following this, the engineer should carry out a thorough cleaning of the inside surfaces, checking of the electrics and the pipe work, and making sure the flue terminal isn’t obstructed.

5. The next job is to make sure that the boiler is combusting properly. This is checked with a flue gas analyser.
A “gas tightness” test should also be carried out, to ensure that no gas is leaking from anywhere in the boiler. This is incredibly important as gas leaks can be very dangerous.

6. Once all of the tests and checks have been carried out, the boiler maintenance engineer should replace the casing of the boiler and leave the area as they found it.

7. If any faults have been found or any repairs need to be made, the boiler maintenance engineer should inform you of them – and of any additional cost that you will incur as a result. They will then provide you with a service report, which you should sign only if you know they have carried out all they have said they have.

There are many companies in Ireland offering boiler maintenance services, and it can be hard to choose the right one. When you choose Gas Services to carry out your boiler maintenance, whether it’s for your annual service or to attend to repairs and breakdowns, you know that you will be receiving a top class service with great value for money.