How Central heating Works
Here we deal with a lot of calls about central heating and how it works, so we (being the helpful plumbers we are) thought we’d write a post on our website in the hopes that it might help you understand better how you central heating works.
We’ll start at where the gas for the heating comes into the property, this will be in a box away from your house, inside the box will be a pipe connecting the mains to your stop tap and then your regulator, which will have a meter on it that will measure your gas usage usually in cubic feet. Every now and then your gas company will request a meter reading to see how much gas you have used and charge you accordingly.
It goes from there to your boiler which is usually located in a cupboard. All you need to know about your boiler, is that you shouldn’t be touch it unless to turn it on or off as gas safe engineers are qualified to deal with the boiler and carry out repairs. From the boiler the water travels upstairs or just to a pump if you haven’t got an upstairs, the pump can be isolated for replacement. From the pump the water is pumped to your radiators around your house.
Some properties have a cylinder or your hot water tank as well. This contains a coil that heats up the domestic hot water using electricity. This is a choice some customers make as they wish to have electricity and gas heating the water rather than just a normal combi boiler running on demand.
We don’t deal with the boilers but we can fix your radiators and radiator pipes if you have for example a leak from the radiator or a pipe around the property. If the issue is gas or the boiler itself then you should contact a Gas Safe registered plumber.