Five simple reasons your boiler is not working

When you come home after a long day at work, only to find out the boiler is not working it can be truly heart-breaking. Not only is frustrating to realise you might be facing days without heating and hot water, but the impact on your budget can be significant.

Before you despair and call the engineer, you might want to double-check your heating system and controls to make sure the fault is not just an easy-to-fix one.

Here are some simple reasons your boiler might be playing up:

1. Is your boiler switched on?

Ok, don't just laugh us off, it might seem condescending but hear us out - many people forget they might have switched off the boiler, or perhaps a family member could have done it by mistake. Another common cause is a power cut that's gone unnoticed. Just to make sure you've covered the basics, always check whether the boiler is switched off.

2. Lost pressure.

Many boilers will lose pressure over time, and often there is no reason to worry about it. If you notice the arrow in your pressure gauge is below 1BAR that's a sign of low pressure, and all you need to do is a simple top up.

3. The pilot light is gone.

One of the reasons your boiler is not working could be a broken pilot light, which needs to be alight when the boiler is working in order to burn the gas. In older boilers you'd be able to check the pilot light and restart/reignite it yourself, but with modern combi boilers you will probably need an engineer.

4. Frozen condensate pipe.

If you wake up on a cold winter morning, and the boiler is not working, the culprit might be a frozen condensate pipe. As one end of the condensate pipe is external, this pipe is at a high risk of freezing during cold spells. If you notice your condensate pipe has frozen, you can follow our guide to thawing it you can follow our guide to thawing it.

5. The boiler's thermostat might be to blame.

Sometimes the reason your boiler is not working might not be the boiler at all. The suspect you always need to look at is the thermostat's timer and whether the thermostat is on. You can also try to fire up the boiler by setting the thermostat higher than the current room temperature.

To keep your peace of mind, and to make sure an engineer is always available, whenever you need them, and free of charge on the day, we offer our Care Club home maintenance services.