We are required by law to inspect any gas fired or solid fuel heating appliance and associated pipework located in your home every year.

Our contractor will also check and service your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors whilst carrying out the central heating servicing to ensure the safety of you and your home.

It is essential this work is carried out every year to prevent the occurrence of poisonous gas emissions being produced by faulty heating appliances.

Failure to carry out this work could result in serious illness or death by carbon monoxide poisoning.

When you receive notification of an appointment from our contractor, you must keep this appointment or contact the contractor direct to arrange a more
suitable time.

We will take the necessary legal steps to gain access if you do not allow us to carry out the required work. We may serve a Notice on you and seek possession of your home through the court or we may apply for an injunction.

You are responsible for ensuring you are not using a central heating appliance that you know or suspect to be unsafe. This also applies to gas supply pipes that may not be in current use.

Appliance log books are issued to all properties with gas and solid fuel appliances as part of our heating systems contract.

The log book gives details of the appliances and how to operate the heating and hot water systems within your home. It must be left in the property should you transfer or terminate your tenancy. There is space in the log book for you to keep the engineer's work reports giving a service maintenance record for your appliances. If your heating system has recently been serviced and you do not have a log book or if your last service record is more than twelve months old, please contact the Customer Service Centre.

If you have a solid fuel back boiler and it makes boiling or bubbling noises, damp down the fire and let it go out. You should then contact the Customer Service Centre or the out of hours repairs service.

We will ensure that all open chimneys in use are swept as required. If you regularly use a solid fuel appliance or open fire and you suspect the chimney has not been swept, contact the Customer Service Centre.

Every October we see an increase in the number of boiler breakdowns. 'This is usually because when the system has been inactive for a long period, such as during the summer months, the boiler can lose its internal pressure. 

We would like to try to deal with any problems proactively over the summer when our heating contractors are not so busy. 'We would ask you to test your heating system following steps1 – 7 below:

1. If you have a pre-payment meter, make sure your gas meter has credit on it.
2. Turn your time clock heating control to “constant” or “24hr”.
3. Turn your wall thermostat up, so your heating switches on.
4. Turn all your radiator valves open to maximum.
5. Run the heating for 15 - 30 mins and check your radiators are all getting hot.
6.  Check for water leaks on radiators.
7. Turn room thermostat back down and reset your time clock back to how it was previously set.

If your heating system doesn’t come on or develops a fault as part of these tests, please raise a repair via the on line portal My Winchester Tenancy  or contact our call centre to report the problem by emailing us at housingrepairs@winchester.gov.ukor by calling 01962 848 400