My flat is freezing once again courtesy of the pilot light going out on my central heating boiler. We had high winds here last week so I thought it was getting blown out, but it’s been calm this week and it is persistently going out. Is there anything simple I can do to try and fix it to save the expense of calling out a heating engineer?
With the pilot lit the boiler, which is about 20 years old I would say, seems to work fine. So fingers crossed it is just the pilot light.
you should not try and fix it yourself as gas is extremely dangerous if messed about with by unqualified people
Modern combustion devices have several safety controls to protect you from catastrophic failure. Typically a pilot light will not stay lit because there is a potential danger present. You really need to have a professional service the unit to assure your safety.
Sorry, but this is not DIY territory, unless you have considerable knowledge about the subject.
Sage advice oldboy. However, I wasn’t thinking of stripping the boiler down, I was more interested in hearing whether cleaning the pilot fitting, or looking at the flue may be worthwhile.
The obvious thing is to make sure nothing has changed to cause a big draft in whatever room the boiler is in.
Assuming you’ve done that, then again I echo the words of caution. But, depending on the boiler, it may be the sensor that tells whether the pilot is on. They’re designed to sense the heat from the pilot light, and turn off the gas if the pilot is out. The thing is they can get flaky after a while, so they’ll start turning of the gas even when the pilot is on; this will of course put out the pilot light.
So if you’re confident you can turn off the gas, identify this part, remove it, get a replacement and install the replacement, you could try this. But if you’re not confident, I’d just get a heating person in.