Clunky Back Boiler

[Alcibiade]

We have a back boiler which came with the house when we bought it. It actually works just fine, heats up the house and gives us hot water quite nicely.

However, it is very clunky and is constantly making clunky noises when the flame fires up when we have it on for some time. Looking around on the web, it seems to us that back boilers are a lot noisier than the modern combi-boilers that most people have these days.

Do people know if this clunkiness is just part of having an old back boiler? We asked a gas engineer and he explained that it is just caused by copper pipes expanding and doesn't think it is dangerous.

Thanks for the response!

We have had it serviced before and had a safety cert, although this was two years ago. The opinion that it was pipework expansion causing the noise was from the engineer who serviced it then. We will be getting another service, and my thought is that if it is certified safe, then we should be able to continue using it and accept the noise as part of the package.