Leaking Boiler

· 3 min read
Leaking Boiler

Do you have a leaking boiler?

When you have a boiler that you might think is leaking, but cannot see any type of leak, what now ??

First we must establish which kind of boiler you have, is it a mix boiler, system boiler or heat only boiler.

With  https://tsboilerservicing.co.uk/  and system boilers they work under high pressure, with heat only boilers they're sometimes are pressurised, or work under low pressure.

With all boilers which are pressurised you will have a pressure gauge fitted to either the front of the boiler or near by on the pipe work.

A leaking boiler isn't always a leaking boiler, I know that may sound strange, but it's true. All these boilers working under high pressure should have an expansion vessel fitted either internally or externally, that is normally the reason for a leaking boiler.

Just how do we resolve the leaking boiler problem?

First you ought to have your boiler serviced each year without fail, in the event that you decide never to have your boiler serviced then at sometime in the future you will have an expensive repair bill or even the cost of a fresh boiler.

So why is it important to have your boiler serviced?

The days of not bothering to service your boiler have long gone, these boilers were very basic and not much went wrong with them, the most frequent problem was that the thermal coupling had to be changed. These boilers were not very efficient around 40% of one's fuel bill went of the flue and another 60% into you're heating system.

Because the introduction of the high efficiency condensing boilers it's been very important to possess them serviced every year. These boilers are designed to give the best performance and most of most save you on your own energy bill.


Whenever a boiler service is completed we have been looking first to ensure everything is still safe, there are no combustion or gas leaks, checking over the flue making sure the merchandise of combustion are exiting to the outside as they should.

We have a combustion reading with a combustion analyser and be sure the boiler when running is within the boiler makers parameters, if the reading are not correct then we perform further investigation to discover why, then reset.

Next we arrived at the most frequent problem with one of these boilers.

The expansion vessel, The expansion vessel is a very important section of your boiler and heat, if this is not working properly you then will have problems. The most common problem would be the loss of system pressure, a lot of people describe this as a leaking boiler.

In fact it isn't a leaking boiler, it's an expansion vessel problem. The vessel must be checked every year and reset for the boiler to give its best performance, when the vessel it not checked, as time passes it will stop working.

The Boiler Service

When you contact your neighborhood gas safe registered boiler service engineer to service your boiler, ask him to ensure the expansion vessel is checked over and reset if needed. For reasons uknown when a boiler service is completed, the expansion vessel seems to be left out and not checked, not all of that time period but around 80% of the time. When you read the boiler makers instructions on boiler service they state that the expansion should be checked and reset if needed.

Just what exactly happens to the expansion vessel?

The easiest way to describe the expansion vessel is, its like a car tyre, over time it is going to go flat. The vessel may be the same, it is pumped up with a car pump to a Pressure that's compatible to the sort of heating system you have.

If the vessel loses its pressure then it'll start to fill with water internally, once this starts to occur most people begin to think they may have a leaking boiler.

The expansion vessel works by taking up the expansion of the water as it gets hotter within you're heating system. If the vessel does not have any internal pressure then it will fill with water, once full, your boiler will start to discharge water through the pressure relief valve, release a the pressure to avoid pipes bursting.