Strip down boiler service what should we charge in 2024 ? customers what are you willing to pay ?

how much should we charge as Engineers for a full strip down service and if you're a customer how much are you willing to pay for a full strip down service now on June the 15th 20122 part L of the building regulations changed and in those regulations it says when we are servicing boilers we must follow bs7 593 2019 and the manufacturers instructions so basically there's loads more tests we need to do so what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to do a full strip down service and we can see then exactly what we should be charging for it and if you're a customer how much are you willing to pay so let's get on with it and get on to site and get this full stripped down service carried out to BS 7593 2019 part L of the building regulations and those manufacturers instructions now today I'm on site and I'm actually servicing the ideal Vogue boiler now this is my favorite boiler I've always liked this boiler since it was launched I think it looks good that's a thing about it looking good they're great at doing what they do heating up hot water and Central eating and I think they're value for money now first thing I need to do when I'm servicing a B I can do when I go to anybody's property is I need to do my SATA touch test now this boiler has a plastic cover but the rest of it is steel and obviously all the pipe work coming into the boiler is steel so I will be checking the boiler and then uh checking the meter and all the pipe work and then the next thing I'm going to do is make sure it works now first thing is always prove it and then I need to go touch all the metal pipes everything seems good there try the metal casing cuz obviously the front is plastic that's good there and then I need to go back so now the boiler is sa to touch I need to go and do this now at the meter okay so I can now touch the gas pipe the meter everything seems good there now now before I touch this I have to go back to that known Supply and prove it again but while I'm here I can do my visual inspection it's a smart meter but I'll show you how to get onto this for gas rating now Earth bonding there isn't any not here anyway and there is no tamper screws on there but gas uh ecv Falls to off so that's okay Anaconda it's a bit stretched but it's all right it is sealed got some warnings on it here that's probably because there's no Earth bonding or there looks like there's no Earth bonding so uh that's the faults I've found on the meter so far but I need to get back to do this and prove it again and then we can start doing some tests so let's test this boiler works first of all let's turn the hot tap on make sure it comol on that's working now try the heating so let's just basically turn it higher than the room temperature is now and it should ring the boiler on in a heating mode so the heating works so everything works on this boiler now one of the things we've got to test now on a service is water quality so I've got my idity tube and I'm just going to fill up the idity tube with some central heating water so it's just over the line so now I can get rid of the excess up to the line and then leave it to settle and then look through the tube and see if this actually is a clean system or not now you can see the idity tube the water is like a it's not quite a yellow color but it's an off yellow color now if it was like black or orange then we would be having problems that is magnetite and rust so if we look down the tibility tube now you can see it's pretty clear this water so I am thinking this is inhibitor so now I need to get my inhibitor test strips and test the water now I carry the fernox express inhibitor test strips when I'm on site so I'm just going to get one of the test strips and dip it in the water from the tability tube count to two shake off the excess now just going to leave this for a minute and then test it on the side of the jar here to see exactly how much inhibitor we've got in but already I can see it's picking up more than 150 uh parts per million of inhibitor so this has pretty much told me already that this like I thought it would be is that it's got lots of inhibitor in it now also on the visuals we need to check the condensate pipe and this condensate pipe actually terminates inside the property so it doesn't need installation also this boiler which only installed a year ago go has a filter so we will be cleaning and checking that too now we need to check the flu on the outside and the inside that there's no white showing so let's check and see it sealed on the outside so it is cemented all the way around on the outside and on the inside so that's the flu check done now just carried out a tightness test and on my tightness test results it basically says it's dropped .9 not 7 m so nothing now technically do we need to do a tightness test on a service well according to regulation 269 of the gas safety installation use regulations uh 1998 uh revised in 2018 it basically says we don't need to do a tightness test but on a service we always do a tightness test and I do have one of my trainees with me today so he needs to do tightness testing so that's why we always do them but best practice for me is always carry out a tightness test when you're doing a service if you disagree put in the comments down below now always make sure before you actually start any work and you've got a work toop below you and it needs protection so I've just got a couple of tea towels here to put down so I can put my tools on there I'm not actually going to be standing on this so I don't need to to check how strong it's going to be but I do need to protect it from scratching cuz some customers get a bit annoyed if you uh mess up their work toop let's drop the flap and have a look at the inside see if there's any problems so if we start at the top everything looks good here no signs of any scorching around the heat exchanger we are going to be taking this out and checking inside and cleaning we come down to the water set o that's a bit minging looking so that needs cleaning out check for any leaks down the bottom here which they doesn't seem to be now this is the blanking play and the little plug which has been left behind by the installer because uh this has a Halo on the front so so if anything happens to the Halo you can actually bypass it until it gets sorted out so that's always a good idea if you are installing a Halo sticky bits inside there so the customers always got them so visual looks good first thing we got to do cuz we don't really want to be working on this when it's red out which it isn't at the moment cuz we've only just tested whether it works or not we need to get these full nuts undone and take this cover off now first thing I'm going to do is clean the condensate trap because it looks a bit iffy so on this boiler all youve got to do is lift that off then it twists and pulls up now you don't want to shake it because if you do it could actually empty all the water in there cuz it's quite close to actually working because this works on siphonic action pretty much like a toilet does so once it gets up to this distance here it starts to drain itself and you can see now it's draining itself so that's how the Trap works on these ideal boilers now the trap's out and it's clean and you can see it's a lot better than it was now before you put the Trap Back you've got to make sure you fill it back up with water otherwise the products are combustion can actually affect this trap so we've now put the water Trap Back In I've now let the siphon work so that's the level it goes to once the siphon works so when I put it back in hopefully don't spill water all over the place but that's ready now for going back in next isolate the gas supply under the boiler so now the trap's out of the way I can get at all the bits I need to get at to be able to remove this heat engine so first thing I'm going to do is take the clip off the gas so there just a rubber o-ring in here and it goes back the way it comes out so that way now I can disconnect the two connections on the fan so that one and that one now up to the heat engine we've got three connections we need to get off so we need to get off flame rectification and ignition so that's the ignition that's flame rectification and then the one what's always a pain in the backside to get off is the earth wire they always seem to be tight oh that come off that was all right and then we've just got these four nuts to get off so just use my 10 m wearer ratchet and take off the nuts now there's a seal inside here and the seal will only need to be replaced if there is any signs of damage on it now when I take the nuts off or put them back on I don't know whether this is because of my Commercial background I always go diagonally so you're not twis in the door of the heat engine so once these four knots are out then this whole heat engine will lift out so slightly Pull It Forward so it's off the studs and then lift it off the gas valve and then the whole heat engine comes out so you can see there's two seals on here like a rubber one and then like a glass Fiber One and then we can just have a visual check and make sure it's okay and then this is our ignition probe which looks in really good condition little bit of rust on the end which we can get rid of with a file and then this is our flame rectification probe which again is in really good neck now try not to touch the burner because you don't want your greasy fingers all over that but that looks in pretty good Nick but I think the heat exchanger is going to need a little bit of cleaning out now you can see there is a little bit of debris in there not a lot so a quick white round with a a clean Rag and a quick flush through with the water but we have to make sure we put the Trap Back on otherwise we flood down the bottom there so yeah that looks okay I'm sure a wipo clean all that mess up now you can't use anything abrasive in here and you can use a vinegar and water mix to be able to clean this heat exchanger up but it doesn't really need that it's a year old and it looks in pretty good condition now I've got one of these little uh cleaning tools for in the middle of the waterways this was supplied by different boiler manufacturer but they work brilliantly so uh so this basically you go in between the different waterways of the heat exchanger so it's just a matter of going around each individual one and making sure you can get this little tool all the way around so that's now the heat exchanger clean so it looks tons better now so we can start putting it all back together again now one of the things you need to make sure sure guys is that the Rubber seal hasn't fallen off down here when you've taken the actual heat engine out so this seal goes on there so now it's all back together again make sure you put your Earth clip back on and HT leads and then we put the trap in now the reason for the trap to be clear is so you can see that you've actually I don't know whether you can see that fitted the condensate trap back onto this rubber connector here so that's all back together again so now we can do some tests like testing the expansion vessel to see what that is so let's get on with that don't forget before you can carry out any test you need to put the gas back on now what I've done is I've isolated the valves underneath here there is a drain down at the back here to be able to drain the heat exchanger so I'll take taken the pressure out of the boiler now it's just out of the boiler so what I'm going to do is I'm going to use my little pressure gauge here I'm going to go onto here and see what pressure we've got in the expansion vessel to see whether it needs topping up or not so just going to turn it on make sure it reads by which it does and then screw this onto here and now this should read and tell me what we've got in now in our vessel we've got seven of a bar now this these vessels are normally between 8 and one bar so if I wanted to Top This up what I'm going to do is I'm just going to open the pressure relief valve now there'll be a load of you now start screaming going you can't open the pressure relief valve you'll it well actually the water water quality in this boiler is really really good that's why we tested it first I didn't use the relief valve to drain it but I'm just going to open it because I need some way of getting rid of the water when I put some pressure in here otherwise it's give me false readings so I'm just going to twist the pressure gauge open uh the pressure relief valve open not pressure gauge the pressure relief off so now I'm just going to po it up and it only needed that little bit to go to eight now I've taking it to 0 n of a bar so when I do take this off I might lose a little bit so that's how you test how much pressure is in an expansion vessel now the other thing I need to do is now when I take this off is I need to get some Leak Detection fluid and test and make sure that the shrier valve isn't passing so now I've taken off the pressure gauge I'm just going to put a little bit of leak detecting fluid on the shrier valve and make sure it doesn't Bubble Up that looks pretty good so I'm going to just wipe that off with a bit of a rag and put the dust cap back on so that's the expansion vessel check and the heat exchanger cleaned and the condensate trap cleaned out as well so now we can get it back up and running fill it back up with the um filler Loop which is built in on this Appliance and we're going to put it to just over one bar and then we can get it running now the boiler we've got the boiler up and running so the first test I did was a standing pressure which was 23.8 n m now I'm just doing work working pressure now so I've got the hot tap running I'm working pressure at the meter and I've got 20 point it's flickering between 20.4 n and 20.6 now because I haven't allowed any air into this system when I did the tightness test because I never went lower than the 7 mbars I didn't have to purge but if I had allowed air into the system then I would need to have purged but I didn't but for this meter I would have had to have purged 10 decim Cubed on 0.01 M cubed at either the furthest away from the appliance or the most easiest which would have been the hob but we will be getting the hob up and running because according to img11 appendix 5 we have encountered a hob while we've been servicing this boiler because I keep passing ing it all the time so I have to do some visual checks on that and I'll show you those later that's basically what we've got we've got 20.5 20.6 working pressure at the meter and when we do the test at the inlet now we're only allowed a maximum of a 1 M drop from this pressure now as always once you have removed your test equipment from your test nipple I've put the test nipple back in I've tightened it up using my l F my leak detecting fluid I'm making sure it is not leaking now I need to get a rag again and wipe off the excess but that is looking Ticky Debo while I'm still at the meter what I'm going to do is I'm going to gas rate on hot water and central heating now because this has got like the telephone keypad what I need to do is uh press the nine three times so when I press it the third time the trainee is going to start the stopwatch I'm going to give him the reading and he's going to start the stopwatch at the same time then we're going to time it for 2 minutes and then take the second reading one 2 go and the test volume is. 5368 but I don't need the eight at the end because it's giv me to four decimal places I only need three so that's my first reading so we need to time it for 2 minutes now and then when it gets close to the 2 minutes I will go one two and then on the 2 minutes I will press the nine again and it will give you my second reading so our next test after is 6047 so that's bang on 2 minutes now it's time to gas rate Central eating so we got Central eating on so I've got to kind of like do the buttons and press stopwatch so one two three and the test is 770 7 so just got to wait 2 minutes again now when we gated the hot water that came out at uh 19.75 Kow net so 32 Kow bile of this so nowhere near what it needs but we are just coming to the end of summer so the cold water coming in isn't that cold so anyway need to concentrate on this stop waffling to you and uh look at this so now we've got 8535 all we got to do now is work out what that comes out at now we've worked out the um gas rate for the Central eting and it comes out at 24.05 so that's gas rating the heated and hot water now no wonder this boiler isn't doing much on the hot water we do have a big flow rate of it's around about 16 L of minut it for our temperature our cold water temperature is 16.5 de CRA so doesn't have to eat much up now cold water now shouldn't go over 25° according to the water eggs and the building RS for some reason it's 20° so that's why we got a very very low gas rate on the hot water now I've got uh a CPI SP 620 connected into the inlet of the gas we're now doing working pressure at the appliance for the hot water we got the hot tap on full so we have 19.75 working at the meter and we've got pressure at the appliance with the hot sa B and now have to do the same with the heating now we've got the heating running we've got 19 it's going between 18.9 to 19.6 and we had uh 19.9 when we were working at the meter so it's there all thereabouts for the central heating now the but I hate getting the screw back in now you got to make sure the little o-ring is still on there and you can't turn the gas off unless you go to the meter so I'm not going to do that I'm just going I've got my doors and windows are open so I'm ventilating the place so I've got a bit quick he says so that's the tesni BL in and obviously we need our ldf to see whether it's passing or not which it isn't now the test I'm doing now is I'm doing a sweep test with this uh TPI dc710 flu glas analyzer and I'm just going around here cuz we've taken this off so I'm just checking and making sure the seal is good now this is a two- minute test a sweep test and we for looking for less than 10 parts per million Co but if I'm getting any Co coming out of here I'm not going to be happy so I'm just going around here now just to check now I have checks with my fingers as well and the door is cold even though we've been running it for done we've done all the other tests on the gas rates and the inl pressures and everything and the door burner door is still ConEd so that's a good indication of it's not actually passing through the seal so I've got 41 seconds to go I've got nothing on the screen so I've got no Co whatsoever coming out of here so it's looking good so far just going to the end now we've now completed we've done our 2 minutes we've got no Co what's whatever so there's nothing wrong with the gasket there's nothing wrong with the seal in this in this B what we're going to do now is we're going to put this boiler into maximum and minimum and it's incredibly easy on this boiler so all we need to do is press these two end buttons together and it takes us into the menu then we need to scroll down so we get to service Boe okay then we press select CCT now it tells us minimum central heating rate uh maximum central heating rate maximum domestic hot water rate so we're going to put it in minimum central heating rate first so first of all I need to get the analyzer into here so I need to get this off place that down at the bottom not on the top of the boiler cuz you might not see it I need to set this depth gauge for about 150 mil and then need to slide that into there okay and now I can put it into service mode and then check it all on my app right so we're on maximum rate now uh we've got a stable reading we've got 131 parts per million of Co we've got 9% of CO2 we've got a ratio of. not1 14 so everything's looking pretty good on this one and we're allowed a ratio of .4 and below so that's what it's given us according to the screen the target fan speed is 100% and we've got it at 99% so that's what it is on maximum let's put it on minimum on minimum we've got 15 parts per million of Co again 99.0% of CO2 but this time ratio of .2 that's what we've got now it's saying there fan Target on minimum is 18% and we're on an actual of 18% so that's what we've got on our minimum setting now we can't adjust this there's no way of adjusting this on any uh ideal boiler but and now according to I G11 you should not adjust a zero governor for any reason unless you have spoken to the manufacturer of the boiler and they have given you permission to adjust the zero Governor now obviously you might have to adjust the zero Governor if you converting a boiler from natural gas to LPG or LPG to natural gas but a lot of the boilers now you get conversion kits or they come as LPG so nothing we can do about it that's what we're getting so that's what we need to write down so now we're doing flu Integrity test so a minimum we've got three parts per million with no carbon dioxide with 20.9% oxygen and on maximum we've got no Co we've got no CO2 so we've got no ratio and we've got 20.9% oxygen again now next thing is I'm going to try the safety devices and see if this boiler actually locks out if we've got no gas so I'm going to turn a hot tap on wait till it fires up and then I'm just going to turn off the gas valve underneath the boiler so I slight the gas going in it should then sense there's no gas and it should go to a b cone so the burner is on turn off the gas the Burn's gone off it's gone straight away flame lost and it says contact installer so turn the to off put the gas back on wherever it is try it again and it's back on so flame rectification works on this boiler that's all we needed today so it even shows you on the app that we've had a flame loss with an F2 fa now the last test we've got to do is the sweep test around the casing because we've had the casing off but what I always tell or always advise my trainees to do is take a picture of your flu gas analyzing sample points and that will always remind you that you've put the actual test points back on because a lot of guys when they go to service boilers find the test points missing now if the test point is missing on the products of combustion out under mm G11 that is classed as immediately dangerous even if you got less than 10 parts per Milligan Co coming into the room but if your test point is missing on your air Inlet and you've got less than 10 parts per million of Co coming into the room that's deemed at risk but if you got more than 10 parts a million of Co coming into the room that's immediately dangerous so it's just a little trick a little tip just to make sure that you haven't left the test point off so the results on The Sweep test zero parts per million for Co so after the 2 minutes we are safe so I just finished the sweep test around the casing no Co whatsoever coming around after the 2 minutes so that's all our test complete now next job is to clean out the filter and check the filter so isolate the two valves on this side here and we need to take off this cap here which is just a dusting dripping cap then we need to take out the magnet and we need a flat screwdriver just to open up the valve and then just quickly open this valve to blast out any Dey then we can close this and then open these back up put back in the magnet and then top up if we need to now B above M Brew for the end now we finished but the last thing we need to do according to mg11 appendix 5 is check any appliances we've encountered now I haven't let any air into the system um but I'm still going to check the flame picture and do some visual checks on this Hub so first thing have we got any signs of scorching well this is marble so this is non-combustible material we have got a w burner at the back the hob is now this is one of the things what annoys me with kitchens they tell us we need a 50 mil Gap ey of the side but they make things like extractors the 600 the same as the hob or 500 or whatever where really they should be another 100 Mil longer to give us the distance away from on burning so as long as we're more than 450 which we are I'm just going to check underneath and make sure there's no scotching not burning under it there isn't there's nothing so there's no signs of scorching no signs of burning on this hob if we did have scorching or burning that would be at risk so I'm just going to check it so small ring Works turn it to minimum that still works that one okay onto the walk burner down to Min minimum that works back right Works looks good stays on front right that works so safety devices I'm going to check the safety devices now as you could see these have got thermoelectric devices in now I seem to have a load of discussions on social media about checking thermoelectric devices guys there's two ways of checking thermoelectric devices one where we can blow them out and time how long it takes to knock off the gas coming out or you can do it the really crap way where you can turn them off using the knob and then time and test how long you can hear the clip going out now when you're blowing them out you are simulating it happening in real life and they have to knock off within 60 seconds now this room is well ventilated we've had the doors open we've got the windows open there's no chance of us blowing the kitchen up so I can blow these out and I prefer to blow them out because one I'm old school and two I am simulating what would happen in real life to see if the thermoelectric device actually does close so if I was to do this one here I turn it on full rate I get my stopwatch ready I blow it out I can hear the gas coming out that was just just under 5 seconds and I can hear it's actually shut off there's no gas coming out so if you think what I have just done is dangerous I can't really say on social media what I think you are because it let 5 Seconds of gas out now if I turn it on and then I turn it off off and now I start timing for the click do I actually know it's turned off now some of you will go oh well you know it's turned off because it's made the click so that's the other test I don't like doing that test because I have had we've actually got appliances in the center if you turn and that's why they're in the center if you turn them off you you hear the click and you think it's fine but actually if you blow it out it isn't fine because there's no washer on the actual thermoelectric device it just continues to put gas out so they are the two ways so don't get on at me in the comments down bottom I'm dangerous because I'm not dangerous because I know how Gas Works I've ventilated the building I've told the customer that they might smell a bit gas cuz trust me this customer runs a mile when we smell gas so in my eyes it's impossible for me to blow up and if it doesn't knock off within the 60 seconds just turn the gas off and deem it immediately dangerous because it hasn't turned off if I just turn the knob off I don't know whether it's going to turn off or not anyway I'm just waffling now so the place is well ventilated I've got the front door open which is blowing a gale through to the kitchen and I've got the patio door open so you can actually feel the draft blowing through here so don't tell me the place isn't ventilated so if you want to have a go at me in the comments have a go but I'll still think you're a I will BL that bit out anyway so I'm going to test all the others now and make sure they turn off now also what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn this smallest hob on I'm going to turn it down to minimum and I'm going to turn the hot water on and see if it affects the safe operation of this hob so over to the sink turn on the hot tu make sure we get some hot water coming out there's the hot water so we know now the boil is fired up let's go back to the hub and it's made no difference so we know this boiler is not affecting the safe operation of any of the appliances so that is the completion of the service of this ideal Vogue boiler so I'm going to finish my Brew then I've got the paperwork to fill in so I'm going to issue a service sheet to the customer and also I'm going to write in the back of the manufacturers instructions where the Benchmark is for the servicing and fill all that in as well I'm also going to tape the little test strip um I have I did before I'm going to celot tap that also to the manufacturers instructions and I've also sent the customer the uh screenshot of the app so they've got all that as well so that is servicing this boiler and complying to the manufacturer's instructions so this boiler will have a warranty so if anything happens to this boiler and if ideal engineer comes around and goes I'm not repairing it because you've not had it serviced the customer has got all the information they require to say well actually I have so hopefully you've liked the video hopefully I like this coffee and I'll catch you on the next one cheers

Channel: Tomkat Gas Training

Views: 31,827

Keywords: how to service a gas boiler, combi boilers

Id: qNdENoCmL_I

Length: 41min 34sec (2494 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023