Boilers
Boilers AndHydronic Heat
Pressure that will not hold, radiators that never get warm, and the repair-or-replace question on a system that has been running a long time.
A Sealed System Should Not Need Topping Up
The single most common thing we are told about a boiler is that it needs refilling every few weeks and has done for a while. That is worth taking seriously, because a sealed heating system holds a fixed volume of water and has nowhere to lose it. If the pressure keeps dropping, water is going somewhere — and every top-up brings in fresh, oxygenated water, which is what corrodes a system from the inside.
The good news is that it is not always a leak in the pipework. A failed expansion vessel or a weeping pressure relief valve produces the same complaint and is a much smaller job. The bad news is that topping it up indefinitely without finding out which you have is how a manageable repair turns into a system full of sludge and a boiler working against it.
Boiler Work We Take On
Pressure loss
Finding where the water is going — pipework, expansion vessel, relief valve or the boiler itself. They are different jobs at very different prices.
No heat or partial heat
Whole-system failures and the more puzzling kind where half the house is warm and the other half never has been.
Cold radiators and zones
Air, sludge, a failed circulator, a stuck zone valve or a system that was never balanced properly after someone added to it.
In-floor and hydronic
Radiant systems, manifolds and zoning — including the ones installed by somebody who has since left the province.
Noise and kettling
Banging, gurgling and the kettle-like rumble that usually means scale on a heat exchanger and a system asking for attention.
Replacement and planning
When a boiler reaches the end, the sensible time to plan it is spring, not the week it finally stops in February.
What Your Boiler Is Telling You
Boilers give a lot of warning. It is just that the warnings are easy to live with for a season or two.
- Pressure that drops and needs topping up every few weeks
- Radiators cold at the top, or cold entirely while others are hot
- Banging, gurgling or a kettling rumble when it fires
- A boiler that locks out and needs resetting to run again
- Visible corrosion, staining or damp around the unit or its pipework
- Water coming from the pressure relief discharge outside
- Heat that takes far longer to come up than it used to
- A system that was added to during a renovation and has never worked properly since
What Decides the Cost
Boilers vary more than almost any other appliance in a house, so a published range would be close to meaningless. A zone valve is an afternoon. A boiler replacement on a system with three zones, a mix of pipework eras and a manifold somebody improvised is a considerably larger piece of work, and the difference is in the system rather than in the box on the wall.
Where replacement is on the table we will set out what the existing system can keep and what has to change, because that split is usually where the real money is — not in the choice of boiler.
- Whether it is a component failure or the boiler itself that has reached the end
- The condition of the existing pipework, zones and controls around it
- How many zones the system runs and whether they are currently working as intended
- Whether the system needs cleaning or flushing before anything new is put on it
Why Boilers Need a Different Approach
The system, not just the boiler
Hanging a new boiler on a system full of sludge gives you a new boiler with the old problem and a shortened warranty.
We find where the water goes
Topping up is not a repair. It is a way of not answering the question, and it costs the system every time it happens.
Plan replacements in spring
Nobody makes a good decision about a boiler in February with no heat and a house full of people. We will tell you when you are approaching that point.
How a Boiler Call Goes
- 01
Symptoms and system history
Age, what has been done to it, what was added and when. Boilers accumulate history and the history explains most faults.
- 02
Look at the whole system
Boiler, pressure, expansion, circulators, zones and controls. The fault is often not in the appliance.
- 03
Explain what is happening
Hydronic systems are genuinely harder to picture than a furnace. We will draw it if that is what makes it clear.
- 04
Repair, or a plan with a timeline
Including what you can reasonably expect to get out of it before the decision has to be made.
- 05
Balance it and test it
Every zone brought up and checked, not just the one you called about.
Boiler Questions
Why do I have to keep topping up the pressure?
Because water is leaving a system that should not lose any. The three usual explanations are a leak in the pipework, a failed expansion vessel, or a pressure relief valve passing water. The last two are small jobs. All three are worth identifying, because repeated refilling introduces fresh oxygenated water and that is what corrodes the system internally.
Some radiators are cold at the top. Is that air?
Cold at the top is usually air and bleeding often fixes it. Cold at the bottom with a warm top is the more telling one — that is generally sludge settling in the bottom of the radiator, which points at the condition of the system water rather than at that radiator. If you are bleeding the same radiator repeatedly, something is putting air in and that is worth finding.
Is a boiler better than a furnace?
They are not really competing. Hydronic heat is even, quiet and comfortable, and in-floor is genuinely pleasant to live with. Forced air heats up faster, can carry cooling and filtration, and costs less to install. What you already have in the house usually settles it, because converting between them is a large job that rarely pays for itself on comfort alone.
My boiler keeps locking out. Can I just keep resetting it?
You can, and you should not for long. A lockout is a safety control doing its job, so repeatedly resetting is overriding something that decided it was not safe to run. Occasionally the cause is trivial. Often it is combustion, water flow or a sensor telling you something real, and the resets are simply postponing the diagnosis.
Our Other Services
Losing Pressure, or Losing Heat?
Tell us how old the system is and what it is doing. If you have been topping it up regularly, mention how often — that alone narrows it down considerably.