Boiler broke due to power outage

A_Lert

To my understanding electricity distributors are not liable for damage caused by surges and spikes, if you can even prove that caused the damage. If it was caused by criminal activity then in theory the criminals could be liable but actually getting any money from that route seems unlikely.

Surges that aren't caused by lightning can be protected against, but of course the protective equipment costs money. You took the risk of not having it, even if you didn't know you were doing so.

Claim on home insurance or boiler-specific cover, or else you're stuck paying out of pocket.

Moonheid

The boiler was turned off. All appliances were. Only left one light switches on as advised.
I have home emergency cover which includes hot water. Someone due out shortly. Thanks for all the kind replies. The sarcastic ones, not so much..👍

Hasbeen

Moonheid said:

The boiler was turned off. All appliances were. Only left one light switches on as advised.
I have home emergency cover which includes hot water. Someone due out shortly. Thanks for all the kind replies. The sarcastic ones, not so much..👍

Sorry OP. But have reread all the replies to you and cannot see any specific sarcastic replies?

What I do see is a  number of people have given up substantial time and effort in attempting to give you meaningful helpful advice. If you think that some have given opinions that you do not agree with then fair enough.

Hope you get it fixed, but be careful as some emergency covers do not include boiler breakdowns.

Please come back with any further questions or advice and eventual outcome would be appreciated to help other future posters with a similar situation.   

 

Moonheid

Hasbeen said:

Moonheid said:

The boiler was turned off. All appliances were. Only left one light switches on as advised.
I have home emergency cover which includes hot water. Someone due out shortly. Thanks for all the kind replies. The sarcastic ones, not so much..👍

Sorry OP. But have reread all the replies to you and cannot see any specific sarcastic replies?

What I do see is a  number of people have given up substantial time and effort in attempting to give you meaningful helpful advice. If you think that some have given opinions that you do not agree with then fair enough.

Hope you get it fixed, but be careful as some emergency covers do not include boiler breakdowns.

Please come back with any further questions or advice and eventual outcome would be appreciated to help other future posters with a similar situation.   

 

And I thanked people for their kind replies. I do appreciate the time and advice given. 

I've had two heating engineers out today. Both have said the PCB has gone. Both agree that the cause was the power outage/surge. Both have said I should claim against SP. Awaiting a call from SP tomorrow. 

matelodave

If you turned the boiler off completely and it failed to start up again when you turned it back on then it can't have been caused by  SP so they cannot be held to be responsible.

It may just be an unfortunate coincidence in which case, unless you have specific boiler insurance, you will probably have to pay for the repair as most insurances dont actually cover for general breakdown of equipment unless it specified in the schedule or policy documentation.

As Gerry says above, if you've got an immersion heater in a hot water tank, then you can still get hot water, just not central heating until the boiler is fixed

Hopefully you don't find this comment sarcastic.

Moonheid

matelodave said:

If you turned the boiler off completely and it failed to start up again when you turned it back on then it can't have been caused by  SP so they cannot be held to be responsible.

It may just be an unfortunate coincidence in which case, unless you have specific boiler insurance, you will probably have to pay for the repair as most insurances dont actually cover for general breakdown of equipment unless it specified in the schedule or policy documentation.

As Gerry says above, if you've got an immersion heater in a hot water tank, then you can still get hot water, just not central heating until the boiler is fixed

Hopefully you don't find this comment sarcastic.

The power outage/surge cause the boiler to turn off along with everything else. I followed SP advice to switch off all sockets. When the power came back the boiler wouldn't power up. Both engineers say the outage has caused the issue and they both said SP should address this. It's combi boiler, so no hot water. 

It's only the sarcasm I find sarcastic.

MWT

Moonheid said:

The power outage/surge cause the boiler to turn off along with everything else. I followed SP advice to switch off all sockets.

Just to be clear, as I doubt your boiler is plugged into a socket, did you turn off the power switch on the wall for the boiler as well? It will have shut itself down when it lost power, but the switch on the wall should have been turned off as well for safety.

As to the engineers precisely diagnosing the cause and the liability, I can only hope they are better heating engineers than they are lawyers...

... and no, that isn't intended to be sarcastic, just that unless you and your neighbours were also reporting a range of other equipment damaged by the 'surge' it is highly unlikely that anything much more than a power outage followed by restoration of power actually occurred.

It is far more likely to be simple bad luck that your boiler failed, than anything you stand a chance of claiming for against SP unfortunately.

The_Fat_Controller

If it really was a surge, this page would be full of people with broken equipment.
I am afraid you have just been unlucky in that something on your control board failed when power was removed and later restored.

Moonheid

SP have agreed to pay for the repairs to the boiler over my £500 home emergency cover limit.

Just thought you'd like to know. Again thanks for the advice everyone. 

matelodave

Good result - thanks for coming back to us