Boiler Repair, Service & Installation in West Wickham (BR4)

The Valuation Office puts 72.4% of West Wickham’s properties between 1930 and 1939. The 2021 Census counted 7,349 households in BR4: 54.1% in semi-detached houses and 15.8% detached, 85.6% owned by the people living in them, and 86.1% heating with mains gas alone, well above the 74.0% for England. A semi of that age usually has a suspended timber ground floor, a first floor of boards on joists, and heating pipework threaded through both, added when the house went over to central heating.

Many heating noises in houses like these come from the pipes.

Ticking and knocking under the floor

Copper grows slightly longer as it heats up and shorter as it cools. On a long run of pipe that is a real movement, and if the pipe is held tight where it passes through a notch in a joist, clipped hard to a board or bearing on another pipe, it sticks and then slips, and every slip is a tick. That is the sound of a heating system warming up in the morning and cooling in the evening: ticking or creaking that starts when the heating comes on, moves along the floor, and stops once everything is up to temperature. It is not dangerous, but it can be loud in a quiet house first thing. The fix is to give the pipe room. With the boards lifted over the noisy run, notches are eased so the pipe sits free, tight clips are swapped for ones with a sleeve, pipes that touch are parted, and a felt or foam pad goes where a pipe has to bear on timber. Finding the exact spot is most of the job, and it usually means listening along the floor while the heating warms up.

A single loud bang or a shudder when a tap is turned off quickly is a different noise. That is water hammer: the moving water stops suddenly and the pressure wave knocks the pipe against whatever it touches. It comes from the cold supply and the taps more often than from the heating, and the cure is clipping the pipe firmly, and sometimes a valve that closes more gently or an arrestor near the tap.

Noise from the boiler itself is a separate matter.

If the knocking comes from the boiler casing rather than the floor, especially a bang as it lights, switch it off and ring us; that goes to the gas engineers we work with. Everything under the boards we put right ourselves.

If the boiler is due for replacement while the floors are up, it is a sensible time to plan the pipework round the new one, and we also arrange boiler installations in BR4.