Having recently started improvements to the house I have tried to factor in every single cost no matter how big or small it may be. One item that has played on my mind well before I even started was how I have been heating the house and the hot water, so for the last few days I have had boiler breakdown cover, gas repairs and plumbers rattling around inside of my head.

At present I use an old style coal boiler and a few copper pipes that circulate the main living providing a sort of medieval radiator.  The pipes also pass through my home made water tank which stores my hot water.

I decided that the best thing to do would be to update everything heating related where possible.  Unfortunately this would involve a lot of man hours. SO! I have spent far too much time looking over different plumbing and heating related websites for information about new so called eco friendly super efficient boilers.

Given the cost and complexity of modern heating system I also considered the long term care of such a system and so I have also been looking into boiler breakdown services and general gas maintenance and heating care plans.

Ideally I want someone via word of mouth, but as I don’t really speak to anyone not only is this going to be a difficult decision, it could also turn out to be a costly one as we all know there are a lot of so called qualified plumbers out there who are far from able at carrying out the work required.

Having peace of mind over your heating system is a must, more so when dealing with gas, the most obvious reason being how dangerous it can be if not respected.  That’s why having boiler breakdown cover and gas a maintenance plan in place is top of my list.

An annual boiler service can set you back a few quid these days and you have to be able to trust the engineer that they have done the work correctly and to a high standard.  One subject I had to read into was the change over from a gas engineer being Corgi registered to now being Gas Safe registered.  Corgi has been around for so long now and it is going to take a while for the public to catch up and be aware that being corgi registered is no longer required and that the person you call to fix or service your gas boiler now needs to be Gas Safe Registered.