DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad ‘Business Owners’
Regulations broken: BS7671:2008

It’s the time of year when boilers get switched on after a long break. It’s good practice to get your boiler serviced sometime before it needs to be switched on to make sure it’s safe. What is safe? Safe can mean a few things more than just the boiler itself. It relates to the room the boiler lives in, the air vents if required that allow the boiler to burn and dispose of the products of combustion properly and many other factors that you the end user may not fully understand. Here’s a good example of what could happen when you don’t service or inspect your boiler regularly.

To put these pictures into context, these photos where taken at a daycare centre where lots of staff, children and parents enter and leave everyday with no knowledge that the boiler is in a dangerous state. And just to make the point that even though the boiler was working correctly on the day we visited it might only take an exceptionally cold day to stop the flue from pulling properly thus allowing the products of combustion (carbon monoxide and other deadly nasties) to come back down the flue and enter the room. That’s a situation that will end in tears.

So you could say that people and carbon dioxide don’t mix but that’s not actually true and that’s the main problem. People and carbon monoxide DO mix and your body likes carbon monoxide much more that it does oxygen and will absorb as much CO as it can get. Well, as much as it can get until you turn blue from lack of oxygen and die that is.

So the boiler pictured above has been plugged up with the daily assortment of dust from the building and extra lint from the dryer, The dryer was pushed up tight against the front or the boiler when we arrived and was also plugging the lower air vent to the room. That was the least of the problems however as the other side of the same air vent was blocked off with a trampoline, various toy boxes and toys stacked up against it and the outside wall. The top of the boiler was stacked with ‘things to dry’ and when we removed the cover plates from he boiler we found all kinds of flammable material which had fallen inside and touching the top and sides of the heat exchanger.

To make matters worse the front vent of the boiler was completely plugged with lint (see the photo with the light shining through brighter on one side than the other), the back end of the boiler where the products of combustion exit and are sucked up the flue were heavily plugged up with debris and lint. The more fluff, lint and debris that collect on the sides of the flue the more difficult it is for the fumes to escape up the flue and make it outside.

After we removed the rubbish from around the boiler we stacked it up and took the last picture in the series. That’s a serious pile of debris and a record breaker! We hoovered out all of the air vents inside and outside of the building and re-assembled the boiler for the remainder of our safety checks. So the lesson here should be to check on your boiler yourself regularly for obvious issues such as debris piled on top or the fresh air vents plugged up with dust, debris, climbing plants or trampolines!. YOU DON’T NEED A GAS ENGINEER FOR THESE COMMON SENSE CHECKS. Once a year or as required get your boiler checked out by a Gas Safe Registered engineer who can test all the bits that you can’t. An extra 50 quid a year might just save someones life and keep you out of jail for corporate manslaughter. Fifty quid!!

Don’t be like this business which was really on the verge of causing some serious health issues with their staff and clients. And don’t be like the many customers I meet on a daily basis who actually BRAG about not having their boiler serviced for 10 or 15 years! Unbelievable!

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