It’s very common for people to have their boiler serviced annually without ever stopping to question it. Much like you have your car insured and ready to go at the time of its renewal, your boiler is serviced once a year. But do we ever stop to question whether we should be doing it once a year, whether it should be every six months, or every eighteen months? Perhaps we should.
The original premise behind this rule was directly put forward by manufacturers themselves as a condition of the warranty of the boiler. Essentially, a boiler in a usable condition for a heating season in a place like Britain is probably being used and put through its paces for around six to eight months. During this time, the boiler is subjected to a certain amount of wear through its operation, as well as the effects of mineral deposits and seal degradation. The annual service for the heating season is typically recommended, as the majority of heating seasons begin as the cold months approach. This ensures that the majority of the accumulated wear and tear over the heating season does not compound itself over the peak usage period of the boiler before it is checked.
However, the evidence to support a precise interval of exactly one year for servicing is less mixed. Perhaps annual servicing is the sensible default to go by, rather than some other frequency with hard evidence behind it. For Boiler Service Gloucester, contact https://www.hprservicesltd.com/gloucester-boilers/boiler-service-gloucester/
For a newer boiler, it is typically the desire to adhere to the original installation period and terms of warranty that dictate servicing. The evidence suggests that, in most cases, imminent failures due to wear and tear will directly be covered under warranty anyway as part of the condition of routine maintenance history, assuming no important fault has developed in the preceding single year on a well-installed modern boiler. In most cases, the risk of serious failure in the first year is considered to be low. However, extended warranty terms are becoming less common on the express condition that the boiler is subject to regular servicing, within a reasonable window.
On an older boiler – perhaps eight to ten years old – the argument in favour of annual servicing becomes stronger. The rate of accelerating wear begins to pick up on seals, and less unpredictable failure modes become less common as well. The consequences of missing early warning signs on these types of failure modes are far more serious than with a boiler under five years old. So, the frequency of attention needed to discover faults through servicing increases on these systems.