What to check before calling us
Breakdowns or loss of performance upon your central heating boiler or range cooker, just at the time you need them the most, is such a nuisance!
Loosing your stove/room heater is very inconvenient!
There are things that you can check out yourself before calling us out and we would like to include a few here for you.
Please note:
If you are used to operating the programmers/controls for your boiler or range cooker then you can proceed as suggested within this guide if it is safe to do so.
If you are not the regular user or are NOT very familiar with the controls/appliances or are in any way unsure, we recommend you seek our professional assistance and request that we attend to carry out these checks for you.
If you are confident that you can safely undertake these checks yourself then please read through the information contained herein before proceeding.
Things to check yourself:
1). Do you have electrical power to your boiler or range cooker?
(Not vapourising cookers – this is discussed further on in this guide)
Are lights visible on your central heating/hot water or central heating/cooking programmer?
Are there any lights which are lit up on the boiler or the range cooker itself?
2). If there are lights on the programmer and / or the boiler or range cooker and nothing has fired up (you did not hear the motor start and a slight roar from the burner), look for red/orange warning lights telling you something else has happened – see below.
Burner Lockout
3). Burner lockout means the oil burner in your central heating boiler or single/twin pressure jet burner has failed to light and gone to safety shut down.
Burner lockout can be caused by a number of issues and we shall look at this in a moment.
Check your boiler for any visible glowing red or orange lights on the outside front panel.
You may have to lift off the front door of the boiler to see the oil pressure jet burner, then look for glowing RED or ORANGE light on the burner itself as shown below.
With range cookers, it can be a little more difficult to locate any Lock-out lights.
Some can be behind the bottom inner door of the cooker;
Others can be seen in the bottom plinth of the cooker right down at floor level as shown below.
If your boiler or range cooker has gone to lockout, make sure any heating/water/cooker programmer is in the off mode (turned off) as shown below.
4). It is important to go and check if you have any oil in the tank.
A large proportion of boiler and range cooker breakdowns result from tanks running out of oil, or constantly running low and dragging in quantities of water and sludge from the internal floor of the oil tank, which contaminates pipes, valves, and burner components, leading to expensive breakdowns.