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What advice would you give to your teenage self? Work hard : At what ever you choose, work hard at enjoying your free time, work hard at enjoying your career time, work hard at relationships by educating yourself with books, podcast, discussions and formal education. You have to go through the Disappointments to get to the Appointments, work hard to process the numbers and do give up if you…

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No Wrong Path

#NoWrongPath is a social media movement which aims to provide inspiration and reassurance to young people receiving their exam results, I have been asked to describe my story / career to assist young people; this is my story. #NoWrongPath I was never massively academic at school because, aside from as many distractions I could find, I was profoundly dyslexic and didn’t have the confidence to…

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External wall insulation

With some of the floors insulated the next area of work was the walls – starting with the front lounge which was where we completed the flooring work. With the existing panelling stripped off we built a new internal stud wall to take the new PIR board insulation. This allowed it to be independent from the poor quality Victorian brickwork and also give us a draft free layer which will keep all of…

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Low temperature underfloor heating.

The house was built in 1886 and so the suspended timber ground floors don’t have any insulation in them. They are designed to be a ventilated space so there is a health current of air flowing under the floors. This makes for quite a cool floor especially in winter with a cold breeze. Of course there is heat loss through the floors but with thick underlay and carpets this can be reduced.…

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Getting more out of the heat pump

There is a technique for extracting heat from one source and passing it to another source without the two liquids mixing – we generally call this hydraulic separation and in this case it’s done with a plate heat exchanger. A plate heat exchanger Using this device I have been able to use some more of the heat pumps capacity to heat my solar system. The reason for not wanting to mix the two…

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Upgrading the insulation in a 1886 terrace house

As many will know, fitting a Hybrid heat pump has the advantage of being able to run your existing radiators with your existing insulation levels and still have a warm house. This is because the boiler in a hybrid system is set to start working when higher flow temperatures are needed. The great beauty of this approach is that it gives the home owner (1) time to improve the thermal properties of…

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Well that’s a wrap for the summer folks

It’s been a hot one in some, not all, places; we’ve had a decent amount of sun shine this year and as a result I have installed an extensive solar thermal system on my garage roof to harvest some of that free energy. The roof is predominantly west facing so get a decent amount of sun up to 3pm in the summer. Also my kitchen window looks over the top of the garage hence the larger array in the…

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Heat Geek qualifications

Delighted to announce that I am now fully Heat Geek qualified. The company, Heat Geek, run advanced heating design courses and are considered to be the pinnacle of practical engineering heating design. Their residential and on-line courses cover all the technical aspects of specifying, sizing and designing boilers, heat emitters, cylinder and heat pumps for domestic and commercial use. This…

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Hybrid heat pumps - the way forward for our aged housing stock

Hybrid heat pumps – the way forward for our aged housing stock

Some background Many people will have heard of heat pumps and certainly AC – air conditioning units? Firstly a heat pump IS an air conditioning units and IS a refrigeration unit. The function of a heat pump (the generic name for all 3) is to extract heat from one source and use it in another source. With a fridge, it’s job is to take heat from the warm air in the fridge and deposit it outside…

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A flue too far.

A flue too far.

This is the condition of a flue up in a loft that I found while investigating poor boiler performance. The boiler had been serviced by British Gas every year and given a clean bill of health. On closer inspection of the flue I found it was hot to the touch on the outside (the cold air intake side) which led me to believe that exhaust gases were escaping from the inner pipe and contaminating the…

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An unvented disaster - saved!

An unvented disaster – saved!

We were asked to look at the hot water system at a big house in Gosforth and found a terrible mismatch of poorly configured and installed high pressure unvented plumbing. Virtually none of the pipework is secured to any of the structure and the electrics are politely dangerous, never mind prone to failure. What was called for was The two cylinders had a combined capacity of 500L but when we…

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Boiler Bee reaches 800 reviews

We are delighted to have reached the wonderful milestone of 800 reviews on Checkatrade.

We’ve been really luck to have very appreciative customer who’ve taken time to give us positive feedback, so thank you all 😀

It’s been a very stressful summer and as winter approaches we traditionally get much busier with breakdowns as people switch on their heating systems. As before we are committed to…

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Busy time at Boiler Bee

It’s been a busy few months at Boiler Bee. There’s been the usual array of breakdowns and repairs needed for my regular customer, for whom I always make time; but as well as them I’ve been extending my portfolio by becoming trained on mobile coffee machines so that I can install, service and repair said machines and keep the mobile vans selling coffee (other drinks are available) to the general…

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How we do magnetic filters

Tricky little job today for Derek. Like a lot of kitchen located combis there isn’t much space below the boiler to fit a jug sized magnetic filter and so at this house in North Shields it seemed possible to fit it in a cupboard next the the pipework boxing.

There was already an access hatch so all the was needed was to drain the system, cut into the pipes and connect the filter – simple!

Th…

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New shirts for Boiler Bee

I am delighted to be sporting our new Boiler Bee work shirts.

The old shirts had been in circulation for about 15 years and, although they were still fine, we due a replacement.

The new shirts have been custom made by Canterbury of New Zealand and embroider by Global Image in North Shields

I hope you’ll agree they look fantastic!

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A plasterer is NOT a heating engineer’s best friend (sometimes)

…and so the saga of boiler flues continues.

It’s every good heating engineers job to inspect flues. Sometimes this means getting your step ladders out with your torch in hand, inspecting what’s hidden in the loft.

Sometimes flues are more accessible but can also be at fault. Today’s job was just to service a Main water heater which is a relatively simple task. However, on inspection of the…

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Flues at wrong angles (again!)

We are increasingly being asked to look at boilers that have developed leakage problems from the flue joints. 9 times out of 10 we find that the clues have not been placed at the correct angle of 1.5-3.0° depending on manufacturer and so condensate liquid (carbonic acid) collects in the seals and destroys them.

This time the faulty flue was on an Ideal iMax 60kw commercial boiler and so made…