DO WE OR DON'T WE, a look at what is required when carrying out a service on a gas boiler.

[Music] hello again it is i derek from tomcat cash training and welcome to this video on do we or don't we on a service of a condensing violin now before we get into this video um please could you take some time to subscribe to this channel because it helps and don't forget to hit that notification bell because you want youtube to tell you we're uploading videos on mondays and wednesdays anyway let's stop waffling as usual and let's get on with it and find out what we should do and what we shouldn't do when we're carrying out a service on a condensing boiler now the first definitely do when you carried out a service on a boiler is you need the manufacturer's instructions now what you can do about the manufacturer's instructions you could ask the customer before you turn up on site do you have the manufacturer's instructions and if they always come back to you like they say to us why don't you know what you're doing well you can say well there's a service record in the back of the book which i need to fill in and there's also some incredibly important readings in this book which are different for different types of mixer boilers and i can't remember every one of them anyway manufactures instructions is key when you're servicing a condensing boiler or any boiler or any gas appliance because you will require them not just for installing them for servicing too also there are some great apps around there if you cannot get all of the manufactures instructions and you can download them you can print them or you can just keep them on your phone as a pdf so check which make and model you're servicing before you actually go on site now as well as the manufacturer's instructions we will also need to carry out this service to regulation 26 9 of the gas safety installation and youth regulations 1998 which was amended in 2018. it says in regulations 26 paragraph 9 the checks we need to do so as we're going through this video you'll find out exactly what these checks are for 26.90 but but behind me now this is the boiler we're going to be servicing it's just a logic and i've got the manufacturer's instructions here to help me so we're going to be going through that now then first thing we need to do before we actually touch this appliance is carry out our safe to touch test i get a lot of stick for these poor little things on social media you can either use it or not use it it's entirely up to you but we must follow this correct procedure for testing them so we must prove that they're okay then use them then prove them again before we touch the appliance now some of the boiler casings are plastic as well so just watch out for that this one isn't it's metal so the first thing i need to do is go over to the plug socket here prove it and i can use it then i can prove it again and then i know it's safe to touch it do we need to do it i certainly advise you to do the safety touch test now um just to be safe so i'm going to test the boiler and test the pipework so so i know it's safe now just need to go and prove it to make sure it's still working so now we know it's safe to touch so that's the safe to touch test now before i take the cover off i'm going to do a visual inspection of this appliance and i'm going to check and see if i can see any faults you spotted any so straight away i can see from my visual inspection i've not even taken the cover off yet i can see somebody's put some tape over the air inlet side first flim integrity now according to igem g11 edition two now we've got a little section there that says if our test point is missing from the air inlet then it's at risk unless you've got more than 10 parts per million of co coming into the room and if you've got the test nipple missing off here where you do your flue gas analyzing then that would make it id even if you've got less than 10 parts per million co coming in so that's the first fault we've got also while we're here we might as well see if it's sealed oh no it's not sealed neither so the flu is not sealed to the wall she's got this bit of a rubber collar around there which isn't even manufactured by ideal so that'll need to be sealed on the service as well while we've found it and this will need have a new turret or a new rubber bung to go into it before we've even taken the case enough also when i look down here somebody has put a push fit stop end on the blow-off so are we going to categorize that well if there's a high limit stat but no blow-off or the blow-off is disconnected or whatever then it's at risk but would you at risk that do you disagree put in the comments down below if you disagree with me so on our visual inspection i've also seen that it's connected to the electrical supply via a plug top so can a boiler be on a plug top yes they can but it must be on an unswitched socket but this is a switch socket so that would make it for us because we're not electricians not current standards and you would note that down on your service record because yes you will need to fill a service record so the major thing we need to do is a visual inspection before we've even taken the cover off and these are the faults we found just by visually looking at it now let's uh take the plug out and check the fuse size while we're here and it's got a three amp fuse in there so at least that's good we've had a 13 amp in we'll be changing it for a three amp same for a few spur as well if you take out the fuse on the fuse spoon it's a 13 amp make sure you replace it with three amp because the wrong size fuse could actually blow the board before it blows the fuse just to finish off with this actual visual inspection before we carry on doing anything else actually to the violet has it got the right controls so if it's a newly installed boiler does it actually have controls for boiler plus because this is a combi remember system boilers and heat only boilers don't need boilerplus controls they need their own set of controls this one's just got a time clock there's no room stack connected to it so if there's no room stack connected to it then that means it's not efficient enough and the customer could be wasting gas so advise the customer that they should have under the building controls part of the building controls they should have a room start fitted but if they don't want it fitting you've still got to note that down and tell them that they should have it fitted can't force them can't pin them down but you need to note it and tell them that they do require it but if it's a brand new installed one and there isn't boilerplus controls then you want to be finding out why they haven't faded them so shall we see if it works then now we've finished all our visual inspections now um we need to check and make sure it works before we do it we go any further because what i found is a lot of people want you to come and service the boiler because you'll do that at a set fee and when you turn up it don't work and i bet most of you out there have heard it was working before you touched it so before you actually start taking the cover off and doing anything let's make sure it works we need to turn it on first well there's a good start turn the power on and it's going through its pre-purge taps just here for the hot water let's put the hot water on it's fired up don't worry about the funny noise when it fired up the gas has been off we have actually gas up there every day but there you go fired up on hot water let's try central eating just turn the time clock on so there you go it works on heating and hot water that's a good start now do we or don't we need to carry out a tightness test on a service well according to regulation 26 9 we don't need to do a tightness test and according to a lot of the boiler manufacturers they don't tell us we need to do a tightness test on a service but do we need to do visual inspections of the gas meter well again because of the changes in igem g11 we should be visually inspecting the meter to see if they're stealing gas and to make sure things like the ecv doesn't fall to on and that we've got stickers on the anaconda that the meter bracket has got seals tamper seals and the shear bolts have been sheared the regulator is sealed we've got earth bonding within 600 and again the earth bonding let's not go there today um gas meter itself does it show signs of damage or corrosion does it have a meter bracket well if you're not doing a tightness test then you're probably not going to do a visual inspection of the meter and you're probably not going to do a gas rate but we'll get to gas rating later so do we have to do a tightness test on a service according to the regulations no we don't but the way i train it is why not you're checking the integrity of the gas so you're doing a service for the customer and you're telling them if they've got a gas leak on up but according to the regulations no we don't now um i always check the safety devices are working first before i take the cover off now you could do the safety devices charge up the safety devices as you're going along now we've seen that the blow off is obviously capped off and you would be telling a customer who needs to go through and give them a quote for putting it through but i always check safety devices first to make sure they are working before i turn it off so the appliance is still on from when we've just tested that it's working so what i'm going to do is i'm going to turn the tap on so it's fired up while it's running i'm going to turn the gas supply off underneath here and it's locked out so the burner lights got out so now what we're waiting for now is for the actual appliance to put a fault up for us trying to fire up again it's reading d on the front which is demand for hot water it's now put an f up saying f2 now it's gone d so it's trying to fire up again let's now put an f2 f2 just trying to fire up again so it's gonna demand again now again saying f2 i know it's trying to fire up again let's go back to f2 and believe it or not it's trying to fire up again it's now saying l two we're coming up with an l2 fault and it's not trying to light now we've seen l2 there's no red light indication or anything like that it's just literally singing l2 on the front screen so i'm going to turn the tap off again i'm going to reinstate the gas supply i'm going to press the reset button and let's try again so what we demand the blue lights come on and we now know the safety device is working if the gas supply was interrupted now i need to isolate the supply now so i can take the cover off now if you are going to go into the pcb if you were doing a breakdown on this oh my advice if the plug socket is well away from where the boiler is it's not well away but it's a little bit away you can retain the fuse because it's all about your safety you don't want anybody plug it back in and turning it back on in this situation where i'm not going into the pcb we're doing a service and everything else is low voltage we're going to be touching and we're going to be turning the appliance off so if we turn the appliance off i can now take the plug out of the plug socket and there'll be no power going to this boiler so we're now safe to take the front cover off now we've taken the front cover off we can do a full visual inspection inside this appliance to make sure we've got no water leaks now we've done all the visual checks inside to make sure we've got no leaks and there are no leaks whatsoever in here and now when it comes to the full servicing procedure we need to look in the manufacturer's instructions to follow those to see exactly what the boiler manufacturer wants us to do they're not all the same some vital manufacturers say completely strip and clean the boiler every year and some of them are quite easy to do that to do with that some by the manufacturers say four or five years they need to be stripped and cleaned and the seals need to be changed and but any seals you found broken no matter whether they say it's all right or it's not you need to replace them so always carry the seal kits again for the boilers you're going to strip and clean because you're offering your customer a service so do we strip and clean them well yes we strip and clean them according to the manufacturer's instructions so again you need to speak to the customer and say how old is your boiler how many times have you had it serviced if the customer says it's been in five years and they've never had anybody look at it then you're going to be needing to take a seal kit with you because you're going to be completely stripping and cleaning it there are obvious things you need to do like clean out the condensate trap that's a given that you'll need to do that whether you're stripping or cleaning it now do we need to check the expansion vessel now again me personally about checking the expansion vessel i would only check the expansion vessel on a service if i thought there was some kind of follower that's just my preference some guys i know check them every time and again is it a mandatory to check the expansion vessel some of the manufacturers don't tell you to check the expansion vessel on a service one of the things you could do is so this is the water tide that's the air side you could just see if there's a difference in sound like there is here and obviously when the appliance is running if the pressure gauge goes straight away the pressure gauge is down here on this one that should be anyway if the pressure gauge starts climbing really quickly then it could either be the incorrect pressure or the expansion vessels needs recharging or replacing so you could do that or not do that put in the comments down guys if you think and every service we should be checking the expansion vessel and we should be stripping and cleaning them so manufacturers say we don't need to so let's start now looking at the checks we do need to do to comply with regulation 26 9. now then these tests according to uh regulation 26 paragraph 9 of the gas safety installation and use regulations so what test do we need to do now then standing pressure and working pressure at the meter now if you're not doing visuals at the meter you're not doing tightness tests at the meter are you going to be doing standing pressure working pressure at the meter no you're not but 26 9 does say we have to test the heat input and or the inlet pressure at the appliance or the operating pressure at the appliance now if you're not doing these tightness tests you're not going to do standing pressure working pressure you're possibly not going to do gas rating neither are you you're just going to rely on your flue gas analyzer readings and to see what your pressure is at your appliance you call that a service anyway if you disagree with me then put down in the comments but regulation 26 9 does say we do need to or should be checking the heat import and our inlet pressures now then we're up to flue gas analyzing because you will have to do a flue gas analyzing on a service whether it's condensate or non-condensing boilers now now understanding your results from your flue gas analyzer is incredibly important and i've done loads of videos on flue gas analyzing so i will leave a link in the description below so you can have a look at those if you wish to now then again put in your probe into your actual sample point you need about 150 in this type of fluid because if you put it in too far you will suck up all that moist air which you don't really want flu integrity testing now flu integrity testing is it required on a service no it's not um according to gas safety isn't anyway but according to regulation 26.9 it does say check the integrity of the flu system so i would be doing a flu integrity test on a service definitely also we've still got to check the full length and where it terminates and all that kind of stuff because you've got to go another look outside don't you because you don't know whether it's fluid into a conservatory or not or it's in over a boundary again fluent locations for boiler fluids i've done loads of videos for them so have a look at the channel so it's not just racking up and doing your flue gas analyzer readings it's understanding your flue gas analyzer readings as well but the manufacturers will give you the readings what they should be this isn't that good it just says a reading of less than 0.004 for the ratio it doesn't tell you what your co is doesn't tell you what your co2 should be so that's flue gas analyzing it's something we definitely have to do on a service now another test we have to do on the service is the sweep test some of you might not have even heard of a sweep test but a sweep test is even in the analyzer we've got a separate setting for sweep test because we have to check and make sure that the seals on the boiler whether they're inside or outside are working so we must check around the outside of the casing or around the outside of the combustion chamber or where the manufacturer tells you to see whether we've got more than 10 parts per million co coming into the room just remember before carrying out your sweep test make sure your test points are back on because your sweep test will tell you if you forgot to put them on hopefully so yes that should be done on a service it's checking the integrity of it also in the in the regulation 26.9 it says things like check ventilation requirements this doesn't need ventilation requirements it says they like check whether the room's big enough well this can go anywhere now really can't it except in your bath you don't want to put it in your bath anyway flue gas analyzer readings read the manufacturer's instructions but the main thing is to understand what readings you should be getting so are there any other checks we need to do now well yeah if they have a filter on the boiler which they should have now for the new ones then do we need to clean that filter well i would if you're offering a service kind of service then you should be cleaning the filter also now well it's not complete regulation yet but are we checking the quality of the water system in the central eating is there enough inhibitor in there again there's loads of different test kits and again i've done loads of different videos now on testing the quality of water out there but that will become mandatory pretty soon i would think so yes there are loads of other tests we could do are we walking around the system to see whether they've got any leaks or not also make sure all the radiators are working and that it's the correct pressure in the system and if the radiators do need bleeding just bleed the radiators and then re-top up the system to the correct pressure and the last thing is are there any other appliances we need to check on a service well actually yes it says in igem g11 appendix 5 in addition to if we're doing a service on a boiler and we encounter other appliances there are checks we need to do for them as well so it's not just racking up and checking the one appliance you will also have to check other appliances you've encountered i've done this in other videos but let's just have a quick recap so this is appendix 5 your visual risk assessment of gas appliances in igem g11 edition it's also in the first edition but it has been upgraded around here so it's basically the visual risk assessment of appliances that and it says in there you've encountered so it's actually set up into three sections and it all depends on whether you've done a tightness test or not whether you've allowed air into the system or not but this is us this is the first one so an appliance is encountered whilst working on another appliance eg while servicing a central heating boiler a gas cooker is installed in the same room a visual assessment of the gas cooker would be necessary so we would need to check this cooker if it's in the same room and this table here tells us what checks we need to do so again we're in this section here an appliance is encountered whilst working on another appliance so we'll need to check its location so is it installed in the right room is it the right size room flew in it's actually a flawless appliance so not a lot to check there ventilation now we'll need to make sure on the room size whether the room's big enough and where there's an openable window obviously the boiler doesn't need any ventilation we need to see if there's any signs of distress on any combustible materials around it and we need to check and make sure it's stable and secure but we don't need to check the flame picture also when we look at here it says a generally a visual risk assessment is for visual apparent defects only and does not require moving an appliance or any building infrastructure unless the engineer has concerns and then it does say for further investigation purposes an engineer will need to hold the relevant qualifications or competency so you would have to have cookers to be able to check it properly otherwise you'd just be dealing with the unsafe situation you see so that's a quick look at the appliances you've encountered on a service so yes we will be checking other appliances now let's just finish off with uh derek's top tips on servicing which are on the board here so let's start at number one and let's have a look at what i think are the things you should be doing on a full service of a condensing boiler let's start number one then shall we number one always make sure you have the manufacturer's instructions to hand before you start any work number two carry out a visual inspection of the appliance and make sure you carry out the safe to touch test before you touch the appliance any pipe work or even the gas meter number three bit controversial but carry out a tightness test and do a visual assessment of the gas meter and its associated pipework number four always check that the boiler is working on central heating and hot water before you actually touch the appliance because you don't want to be falling into the trap it was working before you touched it number five check all the safety devices on the appliance making sure they work so the manufacturer's instructions number six check to see if the appliance requires ventilation now it's not an open fluid appliance this one all modern condensing boilers now don't require ventilation even if they're installed in a cupboard or a compartment number seven isolate the electrical supply and check the fuse to make sure it is only a free amp fuse not a 13 amp fuse and the most important one number eight always service the appliance to the manufacturer's instructions number nine gas rate via boiler on central heating and hot water because you will need to check its heat input and number 10 check the operation or the working pressure or the inlet pressure of the appliance at the appropriate test point on maximum rate number 11 carry out the combustion performance test on the appliance on full rate and minimum rate number 12 check the flu integrity of the flu and the boiler seals around it carrying out a sweep test number 13. clean the magnetic filter and check the water quality to see if you need to add any more inhibitor or not number 14 check any other appliances you have encountered while carrying out the service according to appendix 5 of igem g11 edition 2. and finally fill in the service record in the back of the benchmark book fill in your own paperwork and hand it back to the customer then explain to the customer if there's any faults you've found and how you will have to deal with them according to igem g11 and tell them that their next service will be due in 12 months time and that is the end of this video on servicing a condensing violence so if you've liked this video why don't you give me that thumbs up or leave a constructive comment down below if you've not subscribed to my channel then please subscribe because it helps and don't forget to hit that notification bell because you do want youtube to tell you that we upload videos on mondays and wednesdays all i've got left to say is thanks for listening thanks for watching and i'll catch you on the next one guys cheers

Channel: Tomkat Gas Training

Views: 118,998

Keywords: how to service a gas boiler, service a boiler, how to service a combi boiler, combi boiler not working, how to service a boiler yourself

Id: Eu_IOtITcxA

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021