Spring? Don’t Turn Off Your Boiler Yet!

The daffodils have made their way out of the soil, the croci are a riot of colour and the bluebells are in full bloom: Spring is really on its way! Spring is an exciting time for everybody: the season of new beginnings. It’ll soon be time to put away those winter knits and boots; but does this mean it’s time to turn off your boiler? Read on and find out!

While the weather is indeed warming up, it may not be time to turn your boiler off just yet. March has a habit of surprising us with sneaky frost and wintry showers, so you may find yourself switching it back on just as quickly as you’ve turned it off! But if you are finding yourself living in an uncomfortably hot house, you can of course turn the thermostat down and lessen the amount of time you have the heating on. Or you can turn the heating off, but keep the boiler on. But what if you want to turn the boiler off completely once the really warm weather comes?

Most people like to turn their boilers off over summer for financial reasons, but not everybody is able to: It depends on the age and type of heating and water system you have. For instance, if you have an electric shower and modern washing machine and dishwasher, then you could turn your boiler off completely (as long as you don’t want to take a bath). This is because both modern washing machines and dishwashers are cold fill, meaning they use cold water from the mains and are heated up internally. Even if your dishwasher and washing machine are of the older hot fill models, they’re still able to heat up water internally, so you can still use them with the hot water turned off. With this set up, it would only be water from the kitchen sink and bath that needs heating, although you may prefer cold water in the summer months!

Older boilers (fifteen years or more) usually have a pilot light that burns continuously, which burns energy, so turning off your boiler should be a serious consideration, as this could help save money and more importantly, is environmentally friendly. Even modern boilers, with their energy saving features, might be better turned off if the water cistern is not insulated with polystyrene, as modern ones are.

If you do decide to turn off your boiler off completely, then it’s always a good idea to turn it back on intermittently over summer. This is to prevent the pipes from ‘seizing up’, which may render them useless when you try to turn the boiler back on again once the Summer turns.