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Today I had a request from one of my readers to start a series of articles about how families can save more money by cutting down on expenses. In particular the request was from a reader in the United Kindgom who was struggling with heating bills on her old boiler system. Being from the US and having an old oil heating system in my Florida winter home, the first thing that crossed my mind was to tell her to contact a boiler service to have a technician come out and perform boiler servicing. At the time I was reading her request, I had had a technician in my home performing the bi-annual servicing of my heating system. One thing homeowners often overlook is servicing their heating or cooling systems on a regular basis. In boiler and oil based heating systems, it is critical to have the burners, ignition and heat exchanges serviced as well as having all of the seals and visible pipework checked out for leaks. Servicing will not only cut down on heating expenses, it’s absolutely essential for the safety of your home and family. Many home fires are caused by faulty heating systems and depending on the type of system you have, a system with leaks can cause carbon monoxide poisoning. Recently, in the news here in Florida, a woman and her family were poisoned and almost died because carbon monoxide was leaking into their home from a faulty system and they hadn’t replaced the batteries in their cardon monoxide detector. In another event, an old lady in my neighborhood who has a similar system as mine kept trying to restart her system when it failed. She kept pressing the ignitor to restart the system and eventually the system exploded sending the poor old lady to the hosiptal. Fortunately she was not killed and only a small portion of her home caught on fire. The lady didn’t know that it is dangerous to keep resetting the ignitor because after three presses it usually means the system is out of fuel or needs to be serviced.

For my reader in the United Kingdom, I did some research and contacted a friend who lives in Telford who recommended I visit website of Northern Gas Heating who are a CORGI certified boiler servicing firm offering boiler service at just £55 + vat. Their service is the cheapest on the UK market at this time of writing and their website has a wealth of information regarding options for not only service but for replacing old boiler units with new high-efficiency condensing boilers that could save a homeowner around a third on their fuel bills. The website also features a section on heating system troubleshooting that covers numerous topics for troubleshooting a boiler system. For any UK based readers interested in boiler service or boiler servicing, you can contact Northern Gas Heating via the information below:

Northern Gas Heating
Harrison House
Marston Road
Wolverhampton
WV2 4NJ
Phone: 08707 66 40 70
Fax: 08707 66 40 71
Web: http://www.northerngasheating.com

Over the next few months I’ll be continuing this article series about “Cutting Down on Expenses”. If you have a question you’d like to ask, please feel free to use the contact form and I’ll respond to your question as best I can here on the blog.