Servicing a gas boiler...any value out there?

Had mine serviced by Bord Gais. The chap was here for about an hour and, from what I know, did a thorough job and cleaned up after himself.

He also advised on another minor gas issue I had and told me exactly what needed to be done.

I thought it was €100 well spent.
 
The worst case scenario is that the pcb is banjaxed. I will update when I know.
 
I have to say I seriously doubt anyone registered could afford to service and appliance for €50, seeing as the vat would be 13.5% the gas cert would be roughly €5, then overheads plus running costs, then subtract the tax, youd be left with nothing!

you get what you pay for.
 
BTW OP. the pcb for that boiler can be got from my UK source for stg£94.29+15 shipping+vat @15% (about €150) not 250 like you have been told!
(pm me if you need to know supplier details)

Just have a browse of you boilers manual (pretty old gloworm!) and if you boiler is firing ok once reset, but then requires resetting on next heating cycle (nest timed cycle that is) could possibly be the pump overrun is not working, which would mean your boiler will lockout (overheat)

This would require a new pcb (the bad news!)
Again a llok at the rabbit would be required, hope that helps (and at least saves you 100 euro)
 
DGOBS said:
BTW OP. the pcb for that boiler can be got from my UK source for stg£94.29+15 shipping+vat @15% (about €150) not 250 like you have been told!
(pm me if you need to know supplier details)

This would require a new pcb (the bad news!)
Again a llok at the rabbit would be required, hope that helps (and at least saves you 100 euro)
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OK so I got a guy out today. He was pretty sure before he even started that it was the pcb. He went to work. I was telling him as he worked about getting a pcb from the UK if one was needed. He asked how much. I said that they could be got for 150 euro, as stated by DGOBS. He said that would be 100 euro cheaper than here. Then he said that he was in the middle of installing a pcb into my boiler that "he had in the back on the van" but that he would do it for the same price as the one I said I could get. I didn't even know he had a pcb with him.

Final cost to me was 220euro all in. He was here for 45 minutes. If I had not said that I could get a cheaper pcb from the UK, I have no doubt that I could have parted with 100 euro more. Now I am left wondering..what if I said I could get the pcb for 50 quid!?

Bottom line here folks is, when you get a tradesman into your house, you are at their mercy every time. That's not to say I am angry or disappointed with what I had to pay. It's just a comment.;)
 
gebbel said:
Bottom line here folks is, when you get a tradesman into your house, you are at their mercy every time.
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No. you do what you did and find the right price. You done well with the labour charge, i would have charged you more, but i don't add anything on the price of a part and i would have taken back a part that wasn't needed, I'm not unusual, if you shop around you will find a tradesman that will do a good job at price that suits, a honest man is a honest man no matter what his trade is, Gary.
 
[FONT=&quot]150 quid! you were done. I rebuilt my gloworm's PCB one very cold Sunday morning on the kitchen table bent over a hot soldering iron and the wife complaining of the cold. The thing had two dry joints and a third was not even soldered. I don't know how it worked in the first place! Next time it packs up I am chucking the boiler out and replacing it with a piece of German Engineering. If I can afford it :p
[/FONT]
 
Towger said:
[FONT=&quot]150 quid! you were done. I rebuilt my gloworm's PCB one very cold Sunday morning on the kitchen table bent over a hot soldering iron and the wife complaining of the cold. The thing had two dry joints and a third was not even soldered. I don't know how it worked in the first place! Next time it packs up I am chucking the boiler out and replacing it with a piece of German Engineering. If I can afford it :p
[/FONT]
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I could have paid 250 quid for the pcb. Besides I was watching the guy doing the repairs and there is no way most lay people could do it. I mean we are dealing with gas here! You are obviously more skilled than most!
Anyway the boiler is fine again. That's the main thing!
 
OP, I am delighted you got it for a good price, I always source my parts for some good suppliers these days and pass the saving onto my customers.

As for soldering your pcb, firstly, a serviceman would not do this as it is now an altered part and if something when wrong with the appliance after that he would be liable, secondly, working on a gas applianve without a rgi in this country is a criminal offence!
 
gebbel said:
Anyway the boiler is fine again. That's the main thing!
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Oh how wrong I was! The boiler is still malfunctioning....same thing as before..but this time I am having to reset it more frequently. Like before, the boiler stops and the green reset light lights up. Unlike before, the Burner On light is now flashing on and off. Switching off and on the reset light gets it going again. After about 10 minutes of doing this in the morning, it stayed on for the last 15 minutes without me having to reset it. A bad start to my Sunday...will ring the guy later and get him back here asap!
 
Would need to see it. Could be a few things including the thermocouple, boiler stat or hi limit stat
 
OK so I have got in touch with him and he is coming back to me this afternoon. I was wondering what other posters think of my thinking here: this guy installed a new pcb and I have already paid him 220 euro. Assuming that he finds another fault (which he no doubt will) and tries to charge me for another component, should I object? I mean is it not possible (even probable) that there was nothing wrong with the original pcb in the first place?
 
I would have said, you are entitled to have him repair the boiler with no charge, furthermore, if the problem now turns out to be the stat or thermocouple should you not receive a refund on the pcb? or have the old one refitted and only be charged for the new part?

To be fair, sometimes mistakes like this can happen, you see the boiler problem (which could be one of 2 issues) and you go for replacing one, the boiler now works, and you believe you solved it only to get the dreaded call from an unhappy customer the next day, the only thing you can do, is go make the repair and not charge for it (or make a similar arrangement in the likes of your case) I can happen from time to time.......not too often though!
 
DGOBS said:
I would have said, you are entitled to have him repair the boiler with no charge, furthermore, if the problem now turns out to be the stat or thermocouple should you not receive a refund on the pcb? or have the old one refitted and only be charged for the new part?

To be fair, sometimes mistakes like this can happen, you see the boiler problem (which could be one of 2 issues) and you go for replacing one, the boiler now works, and you believe you solved it only to get the dreaded call from an unhappy customer the next day, the only thing you can do, is go make the repair and not charge for it (or make a similar arrangement in the likes of your case) I can happen from time to time.......not too often though!
Click to expand...

This guy has left my boiler in a much worse state than it was before he came over. Before, I was having to reset the boiler once and away it went. Now it is tripping out every 2 minutes and unusual sounds of ignition, stopping, staring up again...burner light coming on then off again etc.....he didn't even call me today after leaving 2 voice messages and an (admittedly) pressurising SMS. Completely frustrated with his shoddy workmanship and lack of communication.
 
The going rate for a professional gas service engineer is more than your engineer is charging, you had done your home work and you were able to establish this, DGOBS warned you:

" I have to say I seriously doubt anyone registered could afford to service and appliance for €50, seeing as the vat would be 13.5% the gas cert would be roughly €5, then overheads plus running costs, then subtract the tax, you'd be left with nothing!

you get what you pay for".

I couldn't afford to do business at €50 especially with the extra charges as a RGII engineer, my point is competent and registered engineers come at a price and we are only as good as our last job, so that tends to be the motivation to repair in one visit, you wrote that people are at the mercy of trades men, i disagree, you do your homework, find out what's a high/medium/low price and make a decision, you chose cheap,which is fine for a service but faultfinding takes a lot of skill, also there's lots of engineers out there who are honest and don't rip people off.


My advise to you which is happily free:), would be to contact Glowworm: [broken link removed]
you can do this yourself and give them the symptoms and hopefully they can advise you or get your RGII engineer??? to ring them when he's on site, also if you don't have the boiler manual, see if you can download one, try and get as much information on the boiler as you can as the problem could be anyone of numerous components that are responsible for ignition, so either replace them all or find a boiler technician who understands boiler faultfinding, we are a bit different to service engineers, Gary
 
Gary, the part that made me raise eyebrows, was how he dropped his price for the pcb so quickly (to match the imported price!) AND DIDN'T GRUMBLE ABOUT IT AT ALL!! Lends me to think was the 'new' pcb and 'old' pcb he had soldered!! and now you have all the issues that came with that pcb, as Gebbel is pointing out with the 'new' issues smack of a pcb with no logic
 
You know yourself Tony we're only as good as our last job:D, so it ain't looking good for matey, hopefully he has more parts on his van at cheap money, but i would be looking at them first gebbel, it just sounds a bit fishy as parts cost what they cost and it's unusual for someone to sell them for less than they paid for them, Gary.
 
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