Tips for Maintaining Your Boiler’s Efficiency

Energy prices in the UK have fluctuated in recent years, with costs still impacting many households. Despite some reductions, millions of UK households continue to experience fuel poverty.

With the British economy where it is, there has never been a better time to ensure that your home’s boiler is working as efficiently as possible. A new boiler is up to 94% more efficient than older versions, which means that the boiler wastes only 6% of the fuel. Or for every £1 spent, only 6p is not used.

Generally, investing in a new boiler system will help keep running costs lower. While an A-rated boiler will convert up to 94% of the consumed energy into usable heat, older models will lose between 20% and 35%.

Simple Habits To Adopt To Maintain Your Boiler’s Efficiency

There are many habits that UK residents can adopt to maintain their boiler’s efficiency. Here are some of the easier ones for you to take up in your home.

Lower The Hot Water Temperature

Lowering your boiler’s flow temperature—the reading of how hot the water is when leaving the tap—is one incredibly simple way to reduce your energy bill.

Reducing your boiler’s flow temperature helps save energy and puts less strain on its working parts. Older boiler units were designed to heat water to 80°C but can also operate at a lower temperature.

Most HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) specialists will suggest setting the flow temperature down to 60°C. Adjusting the temperature on modern boilers is a simple task.

Also, when you reduce your flow temperature, most modern boilers will operate in condensing mode to ensure that they’re working at their most efficient level.

Heat What’s Necessary

It’s a simple idea, but only heating what you need reduces energy bills. Rather than letting radiators heat empty rooms, reduce valves on individual radiators.

Installing smart metres and thermostats will help homeowners control their energy spending. For example, smart thermostatic radiator valves can help you switch off radiators in separate rooms. Smart metres also let homeowners send automatic readings to their energy supplier, which means there’s no estimation for billings.

According to the Help for Household’s Government campaign, this behaviour change can lead to savings of around £10 a year and much more for some households. While these new devices don’t reduce energy use, they will encourage better habits. It might seem like a little, but it could lead to significant cost savings for households that adjust their usage.

However, integrating technology into boiler systems (no matter the boiler’s age) will help you control energy use in the palm of your hand. Adopting any new habit is easier when made as simple as possible.

Be Aware Of Your Home’s Thermal Properties

A habit to adopt as soon as possible is learning how to identify where you could be losing heat around the home.

A home will lose heat due to thermodynamics. While this may sound incredibly complicated, it’s not. There are a few basic laws of thermodynamics, but we’re going to just talk about two:

First Law of Thermodynamics

The first law states:

“Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be converted from one form to another.”

In layperson’s terms, it means that when heat is generated, it doesn’t disappear; instead, it moves. You will know this if you place something in front of the heater and it begins to heat up.

Using this logic, you want to ensure heat generated in a space moves away more slowly.

Second Law of Thermodynamics

Now the second law says (in the case of heat transfer):

“Heat never flows from a colder body to a hotter body except when external energy is applied.”

Or in extremely basic terms, the heat in your home will move in one direction from a hot towards a cold environment through conduction, convection, radiation or a combination of heat transfers.

By understanding these laws, you can apply them to properly insulating heat.

Stopping cold draughts from blowing through your home will allow the heat from your boiler to linger longer in the room.

According to the Energy Saving Trust for England, Scotland and Wales:

• Insulating a detached home’s cavity wall will save you £370 annually in energy bills.
• Insulating a detached home’s solid wall will save you £500 annually in energy bills.
• Insulating a detached home’s floor will save you £100 annually in energy bills.
• Insulating a detached home’s roof and loft will save you £340annually in energy bills.
• Insulating a detached home’s tanks, pipes, and radiators will save you £155 annually in energy bills.

Other cost-saving building renovations you can do include:

• Installing double-glazed windows saves around £75 – £85 a year.
• Installing a letterbox cover on your front door will save around £20 a year.
• And installing draught proofing for your chimney with a chimney balloon will save you around £15 a year.

But at the end of the day, even the most efficient and large boiler cannot properly heat a home where heat is escaping.

Check Your Boiler Performance During Summer

While you use your boiler daily for hot water, the more extensive heating system can be untouched for months.

Any man-made system with pipes and valves (think about the cooling system in a car) needs to be regularly checked. If left unattended, corrosion (or sludge) can lead to blockages which will cause chaos when the system is switched on with the arrival of winter.

To prevent this from happening, check everything is operating as it should every week during the summer.

Now that we’ve covered some habits, let’s go through the list of how best to maintain your boiler’s efficiency.

Best Methods Of Maintaining Your Boiler’s Efficiency

All these tips will help make your home’s boiler run as efficiently as possible. Let’s start with the basics:

Schedule An Annual Boiler Service

Although homeowners are not legally required to schedule an annual boiler service, having your boiler checked once a year does help prevent issues from occurring. Having a Gas Safe Registered engineer do a yearly service also means it will be more efficient.

Other reasons why you’d want to have an annual service include:

• Preventing large breakdowns
• Keeping your current boiler working for longer
• Protecting your boiler’s warranty
• Keeping your family safe from carbon monoxide poisoning
• And lastly, if you’re a landlord, you must service gas appliances once a year.

Also, an annual service performed by a Gas Safe Registered engineer will include the following:

• An extensive visual inspection
• Checking for corrosion and leaks
• Ensuring all your boiler’s seals are in good condition
• Checking that all the system’s pressures are correct for gas and water
• Testing whether the boiler’s burn rate is safe
• Performing a combustion analysis
• And lastly, ensuring that everything is operating correctly including controls

When the Gas Safe Registered engineer completes their service, they will issue you a certificate. Also, they can advise you on optimising your boiler’s performance.

If you are looking for a professional to assist you with servicing your boiler, we are always here to help within 48 hours.

Keep Your Boiler Clean!

For most, their home’s boiler is out of sight and out of mind, so it doesn’t get the usual household cleaning attention it deserves.

Simply ensuring that dust doesn’t pile up or clog air vents can help your boiler’s performance in the long run. When wiping down your boiler’s surfaces, you may also want to clean out the interior—this is not allowed.

During your annual service, the Gas Safe Registered engineer will ensure the inside of your boiler is clean. Only Gas Safe Registered engineers are allowed to work on the interior of your boiler.

If you want to maintain your boiler’s efficiency actively, the next tip is for you.

Bleeding Radiators

If you’ve detected that the bottom of your radiator is cold while the top is still warm, it likely needs to be bled.

Air pockets can develop in your home’s radiator and cause issues with even water distribution. When bleeding your radiator, what’s happening is you’re releasing the trapped air out of the radiator.

How To Bleed A Radiator

You’ll need a radiator key or flat-head screwdriver and a towel to bleed your radiator.

Let your radiator cool down before you start working on it for safety.

When the radiator has cooled down enough, it’s time to locate the bleed valve. Usually, the bleed valve is on top of the radiator. It will be a small square-shaped valve with a central spindle.

Once you’re happy that you know where all the elements are, prep the area just in case water spills out onto the floor.

Open the bleed valve by turning it anti-clockwise (left) using the radiator key or screwdriver. You should hear a hissing noise of air escaping the system. Make sure to have a small container and a cloth to catch the water spilling out.

Keep the valve open until a steady stream of water flows from the radiator and then close it. Be careful not to overtighten it as this can cause further issues.

If you need more details, we have a guide on the most efficient way to use radiators.

Check The Boiler’s Pressure

Water pressure is significant to your boiler’s performance. Although a boiler’s pressure will vary slightly, you want your system to operate between 1 and 2 bars.

If the pressure escalates above 2.75 bars, you will want to bleed the radiator. And if your boiler is low, such as reading less than 1 bar, your system has lost water.

If your boiler’s pressure is too low, you can top it up with water. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions as closely as possible and refer to the supplied manual.

When complete, do a simple visual inspection for a leak.

But what if your radiators aren’t heating up as they should even after bleeding the system?

Get A Powerflush Done

When a boiler’s system is old, corrosion can gather over the years and form sludge, which can cause blockages in a heating system.

A sure sign that your radiator has sludge and not an air pocket is that the bottom of the unit will be cold to the touch. The sludge or debris gathers at the bottom, preventing the space from distributing heat.

To solve this, you will need to flush the system. The process is self-explanatory: grab something to force water at a high pressure to remove the sludge.

We’d highly recommend getting a Gas Safe Registered engineer to assist with this as without the correct equipment it is a filthy job to do yourself.

As a preemptive step, always ask whoever is servicing your boiler to add a sludge inhibitor. If you own an older system, you can ask a professional to perform magnetic cleaning. Magnetic cleaning is exactly what it sounds like: you’re filtering out metal shavings or debris.

If none of our suggestions have worked, it could be time to upgrade your boiler to a newer and more efficient one.

When All Else Has Failed – Upgrade

Installing a new boiler in your home can cost between £1500 and £3500. These estimates also include:

• Labour
• Materials
• And the possible additional modifications.

While selecting the correct boiler is usually tricky, we’ve created an easy-to-follow process to help you. If you are worried about your budget, you can learn more about planning on buying a boiler on finance here.

Sometimes the best way to make a boiler more efficient is to get a new one.