If your oil or gas boiler hasn't been serviced recently, then you could be wasting money. In fact, by servicing your boiler, you could improve your overall efficiency by 10% - saving you up to €150 per year.

An annual boiler safety check and boiler service, carried out by a professional service engineer ensures that your boiler is functioning properly.  Regular servicing of your boiler is important as it ensures that the boiler is working to the specifications designed by the boiler manufacturer. This will help prolong the life of the boiler as well as reduce the risk of faults and expensive repairs down the line.

The efficiency of boilers, both oil and gas fired, deteriorates with use. There are several reasons for this, the key ones being:

• Soot production from the combustion process coats the heat exchanger surfaces.
• The critical air-to-fuel combustion ratio changes due to gradual component wear.

A boiler service will remove any sooting and, by adjustment, will re-establish the optimum combustion conditions. But while optimising operating efficiency is paramount in these days of rising fuel costs, there are other important benefits in having your boiler serviced:

• By checking the safety controls, early failures can be detected and rectified in good time.
• A variety of operational systems and components will be checked including:

- Gas/Oil leaks
- Boiler start-up performance
- Noises that give an early warning signal of pending component failures.

Just like cars, boilers can operate for many years without servicing but generally with fuel consumption penalties, undermined reliability and even safety implications.