Is your boiler pressure dropping?

Your heating system should hold pressure without adjustment for months on end; in fact, it is normal only to have this adjusted as part of an annual boiler service. If you have to adjust the boiler pressure more often there is likely a loss of pressure from a leak in the system.

Reasons for boiler pressure dropping

Modern boilers are a complicated appliance, on an old system a boiler was little more than an open flame heating a body of water moving through.

Now they are far more efficient but have more components to fail and are under far more strain. A modern system is pressurised from 1-3 bar, and this is close to what keeps your car tyres up!

Common items to fail are pressure relief valves, air emittance traps, pumps and even the main heat exchanger itself. All of these will cause the pressure in the boiler to drop, and the boiler will shut down, causing a loss of heating and hot water.

Diagnosis

Diagnosing why there is a loss of pressure can be complicated, even when checked by a boiler engineer, there are factors that can take specialist leak detection equipment.

We undertake all leak detection starting at the source by examining the boiler for faults before moving onto diagnosing issues within the pipework.

Pipework Leaks

In most properties the pipework is considerably older than the boiler, often there have been several new boilers, but much of the pipework is original.

Where the system was converted from an unpressurised to a pressurised system, this can place a strain on pipework that cannot cope with this added pressure and fails soon after a new boiler is fitted.

At this point we can use our thermal imaging to locate where the pipework runs and then use trace gas to locate the leak along with moisture mapping and acoustic detection, we seek (where possible) to locate the problem with two methods of leak detection.

Pipework can then be exposed and a repair made, we provide a full report for insurers where required and can assist in claiming if you wish us to.