Central Heating

Under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, as a landlord you must ensure the safety of all gas appliances, flues, chimneys (and other related fittings, accessible to your tenants. This extends to a range of dwellings including hotels and other styles of accommodation in this category, holiday lets and rental properties.

There are 3 fundamental things you must ensure (by law) when it comes to providing properties with gas appliances:

1. Upkeep: You have a requirement to keep you stacks, chimneys, flue, gas pipework and appliances in safe working order. The servicing of your gas appliances must occur in line with the recommendations provided by their respective manufacturers. Should you be unable to access these details you must revert to annual check-ups and servicing, unless you’ve been advised differently by a Gas Safe registered engineer. Even if you (as the landlord) are not the owner of a gas-related appliance and your tenant is, as long as it’s connected to the pipework or flue, you remain responsible. Only in instances where this is not the case, and most importantly the tenant is the owner of the apparatus in question, does the liability fall on them.
2. Gas Safety Inspections: A Gas Safe registered engineer has to check the safety of your gas appliances and flues on an annual basis. As a landlord, guidelines introduced in April 2018 grant you permission to have a gas safety check conducted every 10-12 months following the previous review, with the expiry date of your valid existing report remaining intact. Should you be late on having a check done, this is not good as you’re technically breaking the law and the consequences of something going wrong can be extremely heavy. However, the annual clock for getting your next Gas Safety check (i.e. in 10-12 months) is reset.
3. Report: A recorded report of your annual gas safety inspections need to be provided to your tenants in a 28-day period, or instantly if it’s someone commencing a new tenancy at your property. If the space that your letting is for a period of less than 28-days, you must make the gas safety report fully visible in a central space of your property. All gas safety reports must be retained for a minimum of 2 years, and should you fall under the new regulations for flexible gas safety inspections, your report must be stored until a further 2 gas safety reviews are conducted.

Beyond these recommendations, you should also go and notify your tenants where the mechanism for switching off the gas to the premises is located. This should hopefully keep them safe if and when an emergency arises.

Again, we must stress for you to utilise a Gas Safe registered engineer, like those here at PHG Mechanical Services. Anything short of this is unlawful, and you put your tenants in danger should you not comply with these recommendations.

First and foremost, you should open your doors and windows to maintain good ventilation, and don’t touch the on/off switch of any electrical appliances.

Next, you should immediately get in contact with the National Grid, who can be reached on 0800 111 999. This is their emergency line, and it’s free to dial. In response, they’ll send an engineer to your property, absolutely free of charge. This specialist will ensure your space is made safe, typically disengaging the gas supply until a professional firm like ourselves can arrive on-site to carry out the necessary repairs.

When our team are called out, we’ll visit, review the problem, and in conjunction with the repairs, conduct various tests many times over to ensure your health, wellbeing and safety are restored.

Once we’re in a position to reactivate the supply of gas, one of our qualified Gas Safe engineers will be in attendance to ensure it’s done correctly.

Yes, it certainly does.

When cold spots on your radiator, blockages and restricted water flow exist in your central heating system, it has to do a significant amount of work to heat up your home. Also, retaining a consistent temperature becomes difficult, or impossible in extreme cases.

These factors mean that an increased amount of fuel is utilised and in turn more money being spent to preserve it.

However, once a powerflush is conducted, your central heating system runs much more efficiently and doesn’t require as much energy or fuel to keep it operational as when compared to before.

This is a procedure whereby a high flow of water is pumped at low pressure into your central heating system, churning much water through it at a quick speed. This process, accompanied by chemicals will break up any unwanted material, sludge and limescale that is accumulating in the system, leaving it to operate at full efficiency.

Yes, we carry out these works both on a domestic and commercial scale.

Our Gas Safe registered engineers are both qualified and authorised to fit these appliances. They will ensure everything is properly connected so that the residents of your property are in a safe and hazard-free environment whenever gas flows within it.