Now that the summer is here, most of us are cheerful and we tend to smile and have that general feel good attitude. After all people, we are getting some sunshine and warm weather and it’s about time.

With all this happiness in the air, it would seem that winter is a million light years away or so we wish. We tend to forget that in another couple of weeks, the weather is going to change and we will soon start feeling miserable due to the weather.

When the evenings start getting chilly, we would normally turn on our central heating to warm up our homes. However, with months of being inactive, for some strange reason, some central heating systems tend to malfunction. Who knows, probably it feels a bit neglected but whatever the reason, we can’t live without a warm home during the winter.

In order to avoid all the stress that comes with not having a properly functioned boiler, it is advisable that you service your boiler once a year especially if the boiler is an older model. The choice is really up to you. One would ask, "exactly what does servicing your boiler involves?" It is checking, cleaning, testing and fault spotting. Special emphasis is place on testing all the different functions of an appliance for safe and correct operation. Be careful of some of these bigger companies whose engineers try and cut corners on the work then produce a large bill at the end. They often use words such as "annual safety check" which is completely difference from "boiler service". When serving your boiler, try and do this before the autumn months as this could eventually save you money and headache in trying to find a competent Gas Safe certified engineer. Do not wait until the last minute like most of us tend to do.

When you decide to service your boiler, ensure that you seek a registered Gas Safe certified engineer. Do not be afraid to ask to see their identification card before they even touch your boiler. It you get some silly excuse such as it is in my van or I have let it at home, then DO NOT let them touch your boiler until they can produce the card because more than likely, they are not registered and should anything goes wrong, you have stand all loses.

Once you have found a trustworthy Gas Safe engineer you can rest assured that you will be able to rely on that person each time something goes wrong with your boiler to fix the problem.

James Watts is an expert in finding competent Gas Safe Engineers