Gas Safe registered
CR8
Gas Safe engineers across CR8, 24 hours a day.
Answered 24 hours a day by a technical customer service member.
A boiler that only fails in cold weather is usually being starved of gas rather than breaking down.
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 Purley, 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 CR8. They say Woodcote, or Riddlesdown, or Purley Oaks.
Names we hear on CR8 calls, and the postcodes around it
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.
That is almost never a faulty boiler.
CR8 is large interwar and postwar detached houses on wide plots, set back from the road, most of them extended at least once. Two things follow from that shape. The gas meter is a long way from the boiler, and the boiler has usually been replaced with something larger than the one before it.
A bigger appliance needs more gas, and the pipe feeding it often never changed. In mild weather the boiler never asks for its full rate, so nothing shows. On the coldest morning of the year it fires at maximum, the pressure at the appliance falls below what it needs, and it locks out. It looks like a boiler failing under strain. It is a boiler being starved.
This is measurable rather than a matter of opinion. An engineer takes a working gas pressure at the appliance with everything running, and compares it against what the manufacturer requires. If the pipe is undersized for the run, the answer is a larger supply pipe, not a larger boiler, and a great many households have bought the second when they needed the first.
A boiler that has been starved for years often shows it in the burner and the heat exchanger long before it locks out. That is why a proper service includes a combustion check rather than just a clean, and why the reading matters more than how the flame looks.
The commonest call from CR8, 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.
There is one exception worth knowing about here. If the boiler manages heating but drops out whenever hot water is also called for, that is the appliance at its highest demand, and the gas supply is a candidate before any part is. Two symptoms at once usually means one cause underneath them.
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.
Look it up rather than take anybody's word for it.
Most of London drinks water drawn from the Thames and the Lea and treated by Thames Water, and it measures roughly 277 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre. This corner of the city is one of the places where that is not the supplier. Much of it takes its water from SES Water instead, drawn from chalk boreholes rather than from a river.
Scale does the same thing wherever it comes from. In a combi it furs the plate heat exchanger and the hot water goes lukewarm. On a stored system it coats the coil inside the cylinder. In a house where the gas supply is already marginal it does something worse, because a partly blocked exchanger asks the burner to work harder for the same result.
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.
Before any replacement in a house like these, one measurement is worth more than any quote: the working gas pressure at the appliance with everything running. A larger boiler on an undersized supply will lock out exactly as the old one did, and the warranty will not cover it. The pipe is the cheaper half of that answer.
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 Sanderstead and Selsdon and Coulsdon. Everything else is on boiler repair in south 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.
Only ever fails when it is cold?
A boiler that runs perfectly in October and locks out in January is usually not faulty. It is not getting enough gas to reach full rate, and that is measurable in minutes.
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.
Usually because it is not getting enough gas to run at full rate. In mild weather it never asks for maximum, so nothing shows. On the coldest morning it fires flat out, the pressure at the appliance falls below what it needs, and it locks out. That is a supply problem, not a faulty boiler.
By measuring. An engineer takes a working gas pressure at the appliance with everything running and compares it against what the manufacturer requires. It takes minutes and it is a number rather than an opinion. If the pipe is undersized for the distance, the answer is a larger supply pipe.
No, and it is the expensive way to find that out. A larger appliance needs more gas than the one that is already being starved, so it will lock out in the same weather. Manufacturers also require the supply to be correct for the warranty to stand.
Almost certainly not. 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 every other major make. Those two and Ideal are what we open most in CR8, usually system boilers feeding a cylinder, with Baxi, Glow-worm and Potterton on the installations they replaced. If your boiler is showing a fault code, the brand pages explain what it means for your make.
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 it has no gas supply we cover electric boilers as well.
The line is answered 24 hours a day by a technical customer service member, not a call centre reading from a script. If it has locked out in a cold snap we will ask what the weather was doing, because that answer often changes what we bring with us.
Every major make, and the fault code pages often name the part before you ring.
Houses this size run system boilers feeding a cylinder, and here that is mostly Worcester Bosch, Vaillant and Ideal, with Baxi and Glow-worm still common on the installations they replaced. Potterton turns up on anything untouched since the nineties.
Every one of them will lock out if it cannot get the gas it needs, and every one of them shows it as a different code. That is why the reading matters more than the display.
If your boiler is showing a code, the make decides what it means. A Vaillant F28 and a Worcester Bosch EA are both ignition faults and both have several possible causes underneath them. 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.
