No boiler service for 3 years, what to do now?

[Epictantrum]

Hi all, we had a new boiler fitted by a local plumber almost 3 years ago and it is working fine. However, my grand plans to service it every year (required by the guarantee with Worcester Bosch) have come to nothing and I realised it is now well overdue. What would you do:
a) Get it serviced now by a local plumber, keep it going annually and hope if I do have a problem WB won't notice the lack of services initially and cover any problems. Is a service actually useful for a young boiler or is it just to maintain the guarantee (which may be too late anyway)?
b) Get a service agreement/insurance which has an annual service included (some seem a bit too cheap, cheaper than than what you would expect a service to cost on its own, and some are £££, so no idea what level to go for.
c) Wing it. Put the money I would have spent on the above aside and use it to pay for any problems if they crop up.
d) Contact WB and beg forgiveness and see if there is a way to reinstate the guarantee??
Thanks!

Thanks for sharing your advice on how to be a fraudster.

Other handy tips are:

1. take out a loan in someone else’s name
2. look for jackets left on chairs at restaurants when someone nips to the loo and check for a wallet
3. look for old ladies coming out of post offices and knock them over as they might have just withdrawn pension cash.

This thread would be really funny if it wasn't so serious

I hadn't had mine serviced for 6 years (new build so wasn't worried), but paid for the full shebang last year, well clean and service. Just being told it's working efficiently and isn't dangerous is good to know. Plus it's good to have.a service record if you sell up, so I'm going to get it serviced every 2 years now but choosing the basic service option.

I don't think WB would know if and when you serviced it?

I would get a local plumber affiliated with WB to do it. I'm sure loads of people don't have it done that often. Obviously if you're a LL then you must but live in owners must forget to do that all the time.

We let the servicing lapse on our boiler, and when we eventually got round to doing it we found it had been running too hot due to debris build-up, which had then caused damage/warping to some of the internal structures. It cost a few hundred to put right, and it was clear that a regular service would have prevented this happening in the first place. Since then, we've been careful to do it annually.

And no, we had no idea - it seemed to be "running perfectly" when in fact, it was struggling. It was less than 5 years old. The plumber also mentioned that we would have been using a lot more gas during this time, as it was working harder than it needed to.

Added to this are the safety aspects, as others have mentioned. Again, these are mostly invisible problems.

It's like having a car - you don't need to ever bother getting a service, if you don't want to, but you can expect certain things to go wrong if it's not maintained, you never change the oil or fill up the radiator etc. At least with cars you are forced to have an annual safety check MOT.

They'd still do a repair on it for a set fee.

But getting it checked is a good idea.

It is so frightening to think you could live next to someone who doesn’t service their boiler and it could explode / cause your house to catch fire as well as theirs. I wish they’d make it a legal requirement to get boilers serviced.

I had a new boiler 3 years ago with a warranty. When it's serviced he completes a log for the company to show that it's been serviced and the date of the service. So, if the home owner can't produce the log book so to speak, it's not been serviced.

Not true!

What does your home insurance say about boiler servicing. No boiler service negates insurance if it causes damage with some (most) policies Same with intruder alarms etc.

We got a new Worcester Bosch boiler last year with a 12 year guarantee. Before this an annual service wouldn’t have crossed my mind. In your shoes I think I’d ring them, fess up and see if there is a mechanism to rectify it. If not, you haven’t lost anything as there is no way they wouldn’t notice it hadn’t been done - it’s no 1 loophole that they would check.

Ours has a sticker thing on and they have to put that there when it's done. I didn't know it linked back to the manufacturer or anything.

You won't get in trouble or anything for leaving it for a couple years will you? I don't see from who? I guess you mean WB won't replace it if it breaks but they would otherwise if within the timeframe?

I don't really understand any of it myself now, haha x

You won't get into trouble, but the warranty might well be void as the annual service is essential for that.

I think it's pretty nuts we even have gas in houses. Burn off is meant to be highly carcinogenic in the kitchen. I feel somewhat relieved we keep ours in the outhouse.

Our Worcester Bosch boiler unfortunately failed several times in the first few years and has been fixed for free at least four times, until they finally replaced pretty much everything inside it and finally sorted it out. Not ideal, but it does happen! The magnetic filter thing needs emptying every year too.

I would also say that if you have a regular plumber who services your boiler every year, you are likely to be higher up their priority list if you need anything sorting out!

blimey so the entire population of the UK is going to die from "burn off"

there are conspiracy theories and then are utter flights of fancy into Narnia

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/28/pollutants-from-gas-stoves-kill-40000-europeans-each-year-report-finds

Nitrogen dioxide - bad for lungs and heart. Small amount of benzine: carcinogenic.

Thanks for sharing your experience. In council housing the boiler servicing and repairs are the landlord’s responsibility. If there was delay, multiple visits or loss of heating/hot water, compensation may apply under council policy. I will review the details and confirm the applicable compensation amount please text me inbox and share me your issue of photos

In council housing, boiler servicing and repairs are the responsibility of the landlord (the council), not the tenant.
If there has been a delay in repair, multiple failed visits, or loss of heating and hot water, tenants may be entitled to compensation under the council’s repair and complaints policy.
In cases where the manufacturer attends under guarantee, that does not remove the council’s responsibility if there was inconvenience or delay caused.
Each case depends on the length of time without heating/hot water and the impact on the tenant. I will review the details and confirm the applicable compensation amount accordingly.

Putting aside the guarantee, get it serviced. Engineer will check every is running as should including carbon monoxide levels. Our WB boiler has a little pot that collects liquid, this needs to be emptied during a service.

Another usdue could be that if you haven't got a regular Engineer on board servicing your boiler, you'll find it hard to get someone else in quickly if you have a leak/breakdown.

I’m a landlord and have to get the boiler serviced. I have had to call both Worcester Bosch and Vaillant when things have gone wrong under guarantee. They always ask if the boiler has been serviced, and I tell them it has, but they’ve never asked for the documentation.

Should gas fires, hobs or cookers be serviced?

Gas fires - yes. They should really be serviced regularly to make sure they're working correctly and safely.

I've not known of gas hobs or cookers being serviced but they should be kept clean so that the gas flames can burn properly.

That's the article I read that made me switch to induction hob. Luckily I left a high power circuit in the right place just in case, so it was a simple matter to switch over.
We are hoping to get rid of the gas completely and save 100 pounds a year of standing charge, by switching to a heat pump. But not for a few years yet.
Back on topic we never had ours serviced in 14 years, although I do clean the magnetic filter and the condensate trap from time to time, and check the charge in the expansion vessel. There's not a lot more that the proper engineer will do, you're not supposed to routinely clean out the combustion chamber on our boiler anyway.