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Most people know the importance of servicing your boiler to maintain a healthy central heating system. One way of ensuring the user sticks to the schedule of periodic servicing is to use the service interval time controls as a reminder, to ensure they keep to the recommended servicing schedule.

Recently the talk about replacing old and inefficient boilers has grabbed many headlines. New boilers were praised as more economical and much less polluting. However, there was very little attention given to the importance of keeping these boilers in good operating order through periodic maintenance.

There are good reasons for ensuring that your boiler and your central heating system are regularly serviced:

* Ensure steady performance even at peak demand periods. This will ensure safe and reliable operation of the boiler throughout the year and especially during those long cold periods in the winter

* Ensure that as a landlord or property owner, you keep within the law which requires you to maintain the boiler and the central heating system in good operating condition.

Gas Regulation 36 (part of Gas Safety, Installation and Use) 1994 states:

* The owner of the gas appliance has a duty to ensure that the appliance is kept in a safe condition which prevents the risk of injury to anybody using the property. The owner has to ensure the appliances are checked regularly every twelve months.

* Every landlord must make sure that all gas fittings are maintained at a safe condition so as to prevent the risk of injury to any person in lawful occupation of the relevant premises.

* Without prejudice to the generality of the above paragraph, the landlord must ensure that each appliance and flue is checked within twelve months of it being installed and at intervals of not more than twelve months since it was last checked for safety (whether such check was made pursuant to these Regulations or not).

Evidence from the marketplace indicates that it is difficult to enforce these Regulations in the case of private households. It is estimated that there are around 25 million households in the UK and many of them are either unaware of their legal obligation or they are simply delaying the checks due to financial difficulties. There are talks of imposing penalties in cases of accidents that involve damage or injury due to neglect on the side of the home owner.

There are automatic reminding mechanisms that help homeowners or tenants to keep up to the periodic maintenance schedule. Some use a flag up mechanism that raises the flag when it is time to check the system. Other systems take a more drastic route and physically turn the system off if the scheduled service was not done on time, displaying a local engineer's phone number for an emergency service.

Automatic reminders typically let the system have a short period of operations beyond the specified service date before physically shutting it down. While the system is running within this grace period the tenant or the owner must arrange for an urgent service for the system.

According to the records by boiler servicing companies, calls for boiler servicing rise dramatically the closer it gets to the winter period, as systems are restarted after a long break for the summer. Using an automatic reminder for calling an engineer reduces scheduling crunches and un-serviced systems waiting for an engineer.

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Tal Potishman, editor of Heating Central, publishes articles about plumbers, central heating, London Corgi boilers, underfloor heating and solar thermal. He specializes in helping save money by advising on efficient heating.

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