Indemnity policy on boiler

pledgeX

I'm in the process of buying a house and it appears that the vendor does not have the building regulations certificate for when the boiler was installed. This was installed before she moved in and over 12 months ago (installed Aug 09), so I don't think there's anyway to get it certified now.

My solicitor has suggested getting an indemnity policy, which I've had a read about and although is not ideal, it's better than nothing. The vendor has agreed to pay for this as well so we might as well get it.

The thing I'm slightly concerned about though is my solicitor has said this get put into place on completion, not before (we've not exchanged yet). This is slightly concerning me as isn't it possible to be turned down for imdenity insurance? For example if someone has enquired about the boiler to the coucil before.

I questioned this and my solicitor has said this is the normal procedure. This just strikes me as odd, why doesn't it just get put into place now?

We are going to get it serviced anyway to ensure it is all ok, but this is just a bit of extra security I guess.

poppysarah

Wouldn't you rather know it was safe rather than have a certificate?

Gas engineer could give it the once over and check it's safe for about £50.

Seanymph

We had ours serviced yesterday and provided the certificate to the buyers solicitor - surely that should be sufficient?

pledgeX

poppysarah wrote: »

Wouldn't you rather know it was safe rather than have a certificate?

As I said in my last paragraph, we will be getting a service done as well for that exact reason, but having the policy is an extra fallback, because a service can't tell you if it was installed as per the building regs.

Richard_Webster

having the policy is an extra fallback, because a service can't tell you if it was installed as per the building regs.

Neither can the policy!

If it wasn't installed properly and you suffer loss through gas escape or explosion etc then you can't claim on the policy.

You can only claim if the Building Inspectors have nothing better to do than come round and threaten some form of enforcement against you for having a boiler that doesn't comply (assuming that it doesn't comply - which they would have to prove). Building Inspectors are doing this all the time because local councils have tons of money to employ loads of staff to do this kind of thing......I]if you believe that.....well!!![/I

Seanymph

ours is no longer installed according to legal regulations - but it was back when it was installed.

So they couldn't building regs it now anyway.

As long as it's running well and safe I can't see that there would be any problem.

daisymay2008

Seanymph wrote: »

We had ours serviced yesterday and provided the certificate to the buyers solicitor - surely that should be sufficient?

afraid not, as i found out a few weeks ago, i paid £68 to have my boiler serviced (installed 2006) and also had to fork out for indemnity on it

Richard_Webster

It would help a great deal if the mortgage lenders would give us some more realistic guidelines about these issues because many of us do feel that some of the things we ask for are rather over the top but have to do so because the lenders hide behind a set of rules that suggest that we have to insist on these over the top points. Trying to get them to say that we don't need to bother is quite hard work and we only try it if we really have to because it takes up so much time and energy getting answers sometimes.

I mean, how likely is that the Council really will come round and take action about a boiler that doesn't have the right commissioning certificate? If a gas engineer has serviced it recently and issued a gas safety certificate should there really be a problem?

flora48

This boiler indemnity stuff is all very worrying. It seems that many boilers are without paperwork and if a house is on the market surely a gas safety cert should be all that is required. The boiler in my last house was 25 years old and still going strong, serviced annually and no doubt not reaching 'current regulations' but where the paperwork was I haven't a clue. The gas engineer said it was perfectly adequate and parts still freely available.