ACS should cover Building Regulations

I was called out to fix a boiler at a brand new property a few months ago. The customer couldn’t get the manufacturer out for five days, so I was given the green light to fix the boiler.

While carrying out the repair, I noticed the boiler wasn’t connected to an outside temperature sensor and therefore wasn’t running weather compensation. I informed the customer of this omission and explained that it was costing him 5-10 per cent of his gas cost.

The next day I went back to the site (they are still building houses) and spoke to the site manager, who informed me that, “we don’t do weather comp on this site”.

Sadly, the regulations that allow gas engineers to sign off their own work as complying with the regulations were not being followed and they were not complying with Part L.

I believe much of the problem is down to the fact that the ACS reassessment does not cover the Building Regulations and so changes are not communicated at a regular interval.

This results in old standards being maintained and ‘new’ technology such as weather compensation not being understood and adopted by tradespeople. This needs to change.

Richard Weir, Boiler Bee