QHS How to Guides Part Five: Heating and hot water not working

There may be a number of reasons that your heating and hot water have stopped working. Before calling QHS, it’s a good idea to carry out some basic checks of your heating system.

There may be a chance you can get the system running without having to wait for an engineer.

If you pay for gas by pre-paid card or key, check your meter to make sure that there is money on your card.

Follow these steps;

1. Press the red button on your meter
2. The display screen should read ‘On’ or tell you the ‘Amount of Money’
3. If you need to top-up, do so at a local newsagent or post office
4. If the meter is reading ‘Off’ or ‘Call for Help’, contact your gas utility supplier. There may be a problem with your gas supply.

If you don’t pay with a gas card and have a gas cooker, you can check if gas is coming into your home by turning on the gas cooker.

No supply of gas to the cooker means that there is no gas running into your home. This is a supply issue. Contact your gas utility supplier, who will give you more information.

QHS cannot attend if there is no gas in your property as the boiler will not fire up without gas.

Try resetting your boiler by pressing the circular reset button. This will turn the boiler off and on again.

If you have recently topped up your gas card, the boiler may not have registered your new funds. Resetting the boiler will resolve this issue.

The red-circled dot is the reset button

Check your boiler to see if there are any flashing controls or buttons. Is it making a funny low rumbling noise, as if it is trying to get going?

If your boiler is flashing on and off and it is freezing cold weather you may have a frozen condense pipe.

You can defrost your condense pipe yourself using a hot water bottle and/or warm water from the kettle.

This will get your system up and running again. See our How-to-Guide on ‘Defrosting your Condense Pipe’.

In order for the heating to kick in, your roomstat need to be turned up past 21 degrees. If you have a manual dial, you will hear a ‘click’ sound as the heating kicks in.

If you are experiencing problems with your heating and hot water, make sure that you have turned your roomstat up as far as it will go, then wait to see if the radiators get hot. If you have a digistat, turn the temperature up using your digital controller.

Eventually (often without any warning) the batteries on your thermostat will fail, so when this happens you simply just need to replace them. You’ll know if your thermostat (most models) needs new batteries because the battery symbol will flash in the display.

After a power cut, the timer for the boiler may reset itself. It will have forgotten the times you have programmed for it to come on and for it to go off.

You can resolve this easily by re-programming your required times back in. If you have forgotten how to do this, you can use your instruction manual to remind you.

If you are struggling and need help from QHS, call us on 01494 795000. Whilst you wait for an engineer, you can set your heating to ‘constant’ to get heat and hot water.

If your heating and hot water are still not working, call QHS on 01494 795000. Explain that you have carried out the basic checks set out in this "How To Guide". We will be with you as soon as we can.