The boiler is an important facility in the home. It is responsible for making living conditions in the house better by providing heated fluid for bathing and heating the home, depending on the type of central heating system in the house.
As a landlord, you may have wondered, “is boiler repair an emergency,” especially when you believe your tenants can live some days without it.
Yes, hiring someone to do emergency boiler repair is crucial as it directly influences the safety of the living conditions in your home. As a homeowner, you must treat faulty boilers as an emergency, with the slowest response to boiler repair being 24 hours, depending on where your home is located.
Boiler repair attains emergency status during the cold months when extra heating is needed in the home.
In this piece, you’ll understand why boiler repair is an emergency. You’ll also know what contributes to the emergency status of boiler repairs.
Importance of Boiler Repair
Boiler repair is a vital determiner if your home will be occupied soon or not. A functioning boiler tells prospective tenants that they’ll feel comfortable in the heat the boiler will provide through showers or the central heating system when needed.
Repairing a faulty boiler is beneficial to you, as the homeowner, and the tenant in the following ways:
Improved Living Conditions
The boiler in your home provides heat and influences how comfortable your tenants are. During the cold months, there’s more dependence on the boiler to provide heat for the tenant’s comfort.
Therefore, when they break down, the living conditions and comfort of your home reduces. Repairing your boiler as soon as there’s a fault will help your tenants experience minor living discomforts and improve their living conditions quickly.
Higher home value
The more comfortable facilities and equipment you have, the higher the rent value of your home. A boiler is considered an essential comfort facility in the home, and many tenants will pass up a home without a functioning boiler for one that does.
You can increase the rent value of your home, and increase its tenant appeal, by ensuring that your boiler is functioning at its optimum performance. It puts you, the homeowner, in the best position for holding on to your specified home value.
Obedience to local housing laws
Depending on where your property is, some laws stipulate how long a boiler can be faulty. Generally, a homeowner is given 24 hours to fix a defective boiler if a tenant occupies his property.
Failure to abide by this law means the tenant can report you to the appropriate authorities.
Repairing your tenant’s boiler as soon as the law says keeps you in line with the law and helps you to avoid fines and possible court cases.
The boiler repair time frame applies to every season of the year, although your tenant may not be as impacted by a boiler fault in the hot months as in the cold months.
When is Boiler Repair an Emergency?
It’ll be illogical to consider a boiler repair an emergency when it doesn’t adversely affect anyone’s living condition. However, certain conditions make boiler repair an emergency, and they include:
Presence of a tenant
As a homeowner, it is advisable to always have every facility in your home functioning properly as tenants can show interest in occupying it at any time. However, you have the choice of taking your property off the market when it’s not in optimum living condition.
A property that isn’t occupied by a tenant and has a faulty boiler doesn’t expose the homeowner to any legal issues. However, if your property has a tenant, and the boiler needs repair, you should treat the repair as a matter of urgency.
A faulty boiler can reduce the comfort of your home and its habitability by a significant margin.
Nature of boiler fault
A boiler helps to provide heated water and heats the home through the central heating system. However, it is common for a boiler to serve one purpose and not the other.
You can have hot water but no central heating and vice versa. It’s also common for other problems such as unresponsiveness to the thermostat, radiator faults, and low boiler pressure, among others.
The nature of the boiler fault can determine if a repair should be an emergency. Boiler faults that allow water and central heating to keep your tenants warm during the cold months may be delayed before repair.
However, boiler faults that create discomfort, such as no central heating or no hot water and unresponsiveness to the thermostat, especially when heat needs to be increased, should be considered an emergency boiler repair.
While you can delay some boiler repairs, you should repair every boiler fault as soon as possible. It helps you to improve the heating system efficiency and saves costs on other probable faults that may develop.
Season of the year
Home heating isn’t common during the hot months. However, as winter approaches, the need for supplementary heating arises.
The boiler helps to provide heat in the home and any fault that causes it to reduce its efficiency or stop its function should be addressed as fast as possible.
Any boiler fault during the cold months should be considered an emergency. These faults can negatively impact the habitability of your property and expose your tenants to health risks.
What to do in an Emergency Boiler Repair Situation?
An emergency boiler repair situation affects both the tenant and homeowner. Therefore, you’ll have to communicate to reach a decision.
Usually, the responsibility of repairing a faulty boiler rests on the homeowner. However, it is common for tenants and homeowners to reach an agreement.
As a tenant, when you suspect a boiler fault, do the following:
- Reach out to the homeowner or their representative.
- Communicate the possible problem with the boiler and how it’s affecting you.
- Wait for twenty-four hours.
- If the boiler is yet to be repaired, and its effect is immense, contact them again. Inform them of your decision to reach out to a boiler repair service.
- Have a boiler repair service repair the boiler.
While these steps will help you restore the boiler’s functioning, ensure that you reach an agreement with the homeowner about settling the cost of repairs.
Final Thoughts
Boiler repair is an emergency during the cold months of the year. However, a repair can be delayed if your property isn’t occupied.
As a homeowner, you’ll be safe from any legal issues if you treat every boiler repair as an emergency. Also, ensure that you have an open line of communication with your tenant to resolve boiler repair issues promptly.
If you’re looking for reliable and affordable boiler repair service in London, look no further than Gas Boiler & Heating Repair LTD or visit https://gasboilerandheatingrepair.co.uk/. Their engineers have years of experience and are fully insured and certified. They’re located at 49 Pendragon Rd, Bromley BR1 5JZ, United Kingdom but it’s best to just give them a call at +44 7795 034003 and request one of their engineers to come visit and assess the situation.
