Boiler not working no heating or hot water

MightyG77

Good morning everyone.

On saturday my boiler packed up and i contacted my landlord regarding this and he sent a engineer round on Saturday to have a look at it, the engineer said it was more or less dead and a new boiler needs to be fitted.

The question i have is how long am i allowed to be without heating and hot water. Ive heard of the landlord and tenants act 1985 but not sure how long you are legally allowed to be without the heating and hot water.

Any help or advice on this matter would be much appreciated...

tom9980

Ask for the landlord to provide temporary heaters while the replacement is being made. In such a situation I would buy a couple of heaters for the tenant until it was fixed.

Is the shower electric or does it run using the heating system? I prefer electric showers for this very reason. When the boiler breaks you have a hot shower, if the shower breaks you have a boiler to fill the bath.

Expect a few weeks without hot water or heating, most decent plumbers have a few weeks of work, my regular guy had a months worth of work when I needed him in November.

So far your landlord has been prompt with a same day callout when it broke down.

AdrianC

I don't think there is any specific time requirement - it's a case of "reasonable". Your boiler died on Saturday, it's now Monday, it's already been diagnosed, and - presumably - a replacement is being organised? That is a long way from unreasonable.

Rough rule of thumb... If it was YOUR place, would it be sorted substantially quicker?

xylophone

If this were your own property and the boiler packed up, you would do as the landlord did and call out an engineer as soon as possible.

If you were told that the boiler needed to be replaced, no doubt you would organise this as soon as possible and in the mean time use portable heating and the basin filled with hot water from a kettle for a wash down.

You should expect your landlord to provide the heaters and arrange for the fitting of the new boiler as soon as it can be arranged?

whackham

My boiler packed up 1am on New Year's Day, luckily I hae a policy with BG who came out on the afternoon of New Year's Day, unfortunately it needs £500-£600 pounds of parts to fix it and it couldn't be done until today. Fortunately, I'm covered under my policy so is not going to cost me that and they left me with 2 heaters. With the time of year I think this timescale is acceptable and I've coped.

G_M

It is an unfortunate fact of life that at this time of year, when lack of a boiler has its biggest impact, heating engineers are at their busiest dealing with breakdowns.

So getting an engineer out same day is hard, and getting a boiler install done (full days work) also takes time to schedule.

additionally, any sensible owner will take some ('reasonable') time to get competing quotes, as engineers' prices can vary enormously, ad possibly to investigate the most appropriate replacement boiler (rather than just accept the 1st engineer's suggestion).

Of course, the landlord has to balance the reasonableness of taking time to do this against the reasonableness required to get you a working boiler installed.

In the meantime he should provide alternative heating. If he has not, ask him, initially by phone/email but then followed up with a confirmatory letter ("further o our telephone conversation, I am writing to confirm.....")