Gas Safe registered
N1 N5
Gas Safe engineers across N1 and N5, 24 hours a day.
Answered 24 hours a day by a technical customer service member.
Georgian terraces were never built with anywhere to put a boiler, so where it ended up is half the question.
No heating or hot water right now? Call 0203 868 6134. We will tell you the earliest realistic slot rather than the one you want to hear.
Two details to start. Add your postcode and whether there is a cylinder in an airing cupboard and we can usually tell you the likely part before we attend.
We cover Islington, and the whole of London
Tell us the address and you will get an honest answer about timing.
View areas we coverThree steps. The first one usually tells us most of it.
If a repair is not worth doing, we will say so on the phone. Call 0203 868 6134.
Almost nobody says they live in N1. They say Barnsbury, or Canonbury, or just the Angel.
Names we hear on N1 and N5 calls, and the postcodes around them
Grouped by postcode, because that is the one part of an address everybody knows.
We work right across London, north and south of the river. If yours is not here, ring and tell us the address.
So half the job is reaching it, and that is not a complaint.
N1 and N5 are Georgian and early Victorian terraces, four and five storeys, most of them listed or in a conservation area. They were designed around a coal fire in every room, which means there is no plant space in the plan at all. The boiler ends up in a cupboard on a half landing, in a lower ground kitchen, or behind a wall of joinery somebody paid a great deal for.
That has a diagnostic consequence rather than just an access one. With the kitchen in the lower ground and the bathrooms at the top, the hot water has four floors to travel. A secondary return and a pump are doing that work, and when either gives up the top floor goes cold while everything below it stays fine. It is a pump or a scaled circuit, not a failing boiler, and it gets diagnosed as a failing boiler constantly.
The flue is the other constraint. On a listed front elevation, or in the conservation areas that cover most of Barnsbury and Canonbury, a flue often cannot go where a manufacturer's instructions would like it. That decides where an appliance can live long before price does, and it is the question to ask any quote that assumes otherwise.
A whole-house refurbishment usually reroutes the heating and leaves the original cylinder in place, so it is common here to find modern pipework, a modern boiler and a tank older than both. The tank is very often what actually failed.
The commonest call from N1, and it is rarely the boiler.
On a stored system, heating that works and hot water that does not points at the cylinder side. Three usual culprits: the motorised valve that diverts flow to the tank, the cylinder thermostat, and the immersion element. Each costs a fraction of a new appliance and each gets mistaken for one.
In a converted flat the answer is different again. The boiler may be five years old while the pipework is the original house system, older and dirtier than any manufacturer assumes, and a new part fitted into that will fail the same way the last one did. That is a flushing problem, not an appliance problem.
An unvented cylinder is a pressurised store, so working on one is notifiable and needs a G3 qualification on top of Gas Safe registration. Plenty of firms hold one and not the other, which is why a cylinder call so often becomes two visits. Our engineers hold both, so it is one visit and one charge. See unvented cylinder repair.
The one thing a yearly visit genuinely prevents.
London water comes off the Thames and the Lea, both of which run through chalk. It measures roughly 277 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre, and that figure is much the same across the city.
Where it lands is what differs. In a combi it furs the plate heat exchanger and the hot water goes lukewarm. In a Barnsbury or Canonbury terrace that kept its cylinder it lands on the coil inside the tank and in the secondary circuit that carries hot water up four floors. Same water, different part, and a scaled coil reads as a failing boiler often enough that boilers get condemned for it.
Age does not decide it. The failed part does.
A pump, a diverter valve, a thermostat or a fan is a repair on almost any appliance, whatever its age. A failed main heat exchanger on a boiler well past ten years is the point where the arithmetic stops working, and we will tell you that rather than sell you the repair.
What we will not do is use age on its own as the argument. In a listed or conservation-area terrace the deciding question is usually not the boiler at all, it is whether the flue can legally go where a replacement needs it. Getting that answer first is what stops a replacement quote turning into a problem halfway through.
Our boiler replacement page sets out what a replacement actually involves, including what changes when a stored system is converted, and the costs guide explains what moves the figure.
That answer costs nothing. It is the one most people ring us for. Call 0203 868 6134.
Next door to here we cover Highgate, Muswell Hill and Crouch End and Hampstead and Belsize Park. Everything else is on boiler repair in north London and areas we cover.
These are where we work most, not a boundary. An engineer attends anywhere in north London and south London. Tell us where you are and we will say plainly when we can get to you.
Boiler behind the joinery?
Tell us which floor it is on and how you get to it. In a Georgian terrace that is worth as much to us as the fault itself, and it costs nothing to say on the phone.
If you smell gas: do not touch any switches. Open the windows, leave the property, then call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999. That line is free and open 24 hours. Call them before you call us.
If a carbon monoxide alarm is sounding: get everyone out immediately, then call 999 if anyone feels unwell. Do not go back in until the property has been ventilated and checked.
If the boiler locks out repeatedly: try one reset. If it locks out again straight away, stop. Repeated resets hide a fault that is still there, and on a gas appliance that is not a risk worth taking.
Under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, only a Gas Safe registered engineer may work on gas appliances. Never open the boiler casing yourself.
Yes. The names listed above are the ones we hear most, and they are nowhere near a complete list. We work right across London, north and south of the river. Ring and tell us the address and you will get a straight answer about timing.
Almost certainly not. In a house with a cylinder that points at the cylinder side: the motorised valve that diverts to the tank, the cylinder thermostat, or the immersion element. All three cost a fraction of an appliance. Our unvented cylinder repair page explains what is involved.
Yes, and on the same visit where the appliance passes, so a let property is not off the market twice. See landlord gas safety certificates. If the flat has no gas supply we cover electric boilers as well.
It can, and it is the first thing to establish rather than the last. Listed status and conservation area rules reach flue positions, external pipework and condensate runs, so they decide where an appliance is allowed to live. None of it affects a repair.
It can. The boiler may be modern while the pipework is the original house system, older and dirtier than any manufacturer assumes. It is why a new part sometimes fixes nothing and a power flush does. In a converted house the fault is sometimes in shared pipework rather than in your flat at all.
Yes, and every other major make. Those two are common in the terraces that kept a cylinder. Alpha, Main and Ariston turn up in the conversions and the flats above the shops, usually because they fit a cupboard nothing larger would. If your boiler is showing a fault code, the brand pages explain what that code means.
Yes. The rate is agreed on the phone before anybody sets off, and the engineer gives you a written breakdown of the fault, the part and the labour before any repair begins. Nothing goes ahead until you have seen it. Our costs guide sets out what drives the figure.
The line is answered 24 hours a day by a technical customer service member, not a call centre reading from a script. In the middle of the night we will tell you honestly whether it is a tonight job or a first thing in the morning job.
Every major make, and the fault code pages often name the part before you ring.
The split here follows the housing more sharply than most areas. The whole terraces that kept a cylinder run system boilers, mostly Glow-worm, Potterton and Viessmann on anything recently specified. The conversions and the flats above the shops run combis, where Alpha, Main and Ariston are all common, usually because they fit a cupboard nothing larger would.
If your boiler is showing a code, the make decides what it means. A Glow-worm F1 and an Alpha E10 are different faults with different fixes, and neither of them on its own means a new boiler. Each brand page lists the codes for that make and what actually causes them.
The full list is on our boiler brands page, and general repairs are on boiler repair in London.
Tell us where you are and whether there is a cylinder in an airing cupboard. With those two answers we can usually name the likely part, give you the rate, and book somebody in, all on the one call.
Gas Safe registered. Unvented cylinder qualified. Parts guaranteed for a year. Covering London, north and south of the river, 24 hours a day.
