Ways to Get Your Home in Shape For Winter
Winter is rough on our energy bills. We tend to stay indoors and end up spending a fortune keeping our homes warm and cosy. It’s important to make sure your home is in tip top shape for the winter, especially now that more and more people are working from home. Here are some of the best ways to ensure your central heating system is working efficiently and reliably.
Our Top Tips For Winter
- Make sure you get your boiler serviced annually. It’s imperative that your boiler is serviced annually. Partly to save you money on your energy bills but also to ensure that your boiler and heating system is operating safely. Our expert Gas & Heating Engineers are fully qualified and registered Gas Safe and will identify any issues or faults during your annual service. Our engineers will check things such as the ventilation, the flue, gas flow, ignition, and the controls clear out your magnetic filer. Our engineers can also identify any parts that may need replacing due to general wear and tear, ensuring your boiler continues to perform effectively.
- Have your gas fire serviced. It’s incredibly important to have your gas fire serviced annually, even if you’re only using it for a few months a year. A faulty gas fire can emit noxious gases which can be deadly. Our expert Gas & Heating engineers can identify any potential issues with your gas fire and rectify them, ensuring you’re both warm and safe over the winter.
- Check your radiators for cold spots. In the event that your radiator has cold spots, especially at the top, it’s a tell-tale indicator that your radiator is full of air and needs to be “bled”. This is a simple process, requiring only a radiator key and a towel to catch the small amount of water that will escape during the bleeding. It goes without saying that a radiator with cold spots isn’t going to heat a room up as efficiently as a fully functioning radiator. Checking your radiators regularly can help to keep you warm and save on energy bills.
- If your finding cold spots that don’t go away after bleeding or if you’re seeing black water leaking out during the process, it’s a sign that you have a build-up of ‘sludge’. This will result in your system having to work harder to heat your home and it could end up costing you a fortune over a long period of time. Our expert Gas & Heating Engineers can perform a Power flush in order to clear the system out. Other than cold spots, other ways to tell your system is in need of power flushing include, excessive noise and gurgling sounds coming from the radiators and pipework, suggesting your system is working overtime to compensate and the boiler cutting out intermittently. If caught in time, power flushing pushes out all of the sludge allowing the water to flow unimpeded.
- Adjust your heating on/off times. You don’t need the heating on for the full 8 hours you’re out of the house every day. In order to conserve energy and save money, try setting your boiler to come on half an hour before you get home. Smart heating controls are a great way to manually set up heating on/off times as they allow full control of your heating via your mobile phone and can save you a small fortune by only having the heating on when it’s required.
Gas2Heat is your local expert in plumbing and heating with hundreds of 5 star reviews. Call today if you need winter checks carried out on your heating system.
