We have an old but, in my opinion, very reliable boiler at home; its probably 15-20 years old. It gets serviced but Significant Other feels we should have a service contract in place. Trouble is, there seem to be very few companies about that will take on a boiler this old. HomeServe are one that appear they might.
Anyone had experience of HomeServe?
Any other firms that anyone could recommend.

I know someone who has homeserve for their boiler cover, been with them years but only had to use them last month when it packed up on a Saturday on the coldest weekend we had had this year. (they are both in the late 50's and he is a double cancer survivor and not in the best of health! )
They were promised an engineer would be out with temporary heaters so stayed in all day and evening but no engineer,
Promised one the next day, still no engineer.
They did have the option of staying at their sons house but didn't want to miss the engineer coming out.
Engineer eventually came out on the Monday and IIRC fixed it then.

Low opinion of the industry.

Guy in the Yorkshire Wolds I know had no heating 3 week only this month and was on a contract with Domestic and General. They kept sending men and when it finally was dealt with "the senior engineer" it turned out not one of them in years had serviced the basics to include vacing out the burner.

Employ a top local to service it and look after it would be my choice forgetting the insurance side.

Do we have any top guys on here ??????? FL2 MY10 TD4 GS traded in at 2 years
FL2 MY13 TD4 GS Current

Six of one..Half a Dozen of the other. We have our "plant" regularly serviced" but if something goes wrong I fix it, I carry spares of the most likely things to go wrong or if I am stumped or Mr YouTube can't help I get in a local man to do the job.

Last edited by I Like Chips on 17th Mar 2018 9:29 am. Edited 1 time in total

I guess it depends whether you are talking about gas or oil. As far as I can make out nobody wants to touch older boilers and some nowadays only do installations and no repairs or servicing.

In my opinion if you can Service a Land Rover, you can service and fix an oil boiler yourself. Where I buy my spares, you can get good advice, particularly if you are there first thing in the morning when all the local engineers are in getting their spares. They don’t seem to mind people who DIY, as they really don’t want the business. The breakthrough for me was understanding that my oil pressure-jet Rayburn is just a pile of unrelated components in a branded box - a bit like the range of different manufacturers’ components that make up an FL2! 2005 D3 2.7 Auto
Previously:
2010 MY FL2 TD4e GS - Now gone at 199,500 miles, about 135,000 of them mine.
‘93 Defender 110 200TDi CSW
‘87 Defender 90 4 cyl Petrol
‘83 110 CSW V8 - best ever!
Range Rover 2-door V8 (not sure of year - 4-speed box and vacuum diff switch)
Series III SWB Diesel

Boiler contracts are a money making scheme, put the money away in a special account, get a good local man to do a service, though this is mainly for oil, gas is clean burning and the biggest problem is incomplete combustion due to either fan failure ( it should shut down) or inlet or exhaust being blocked.
Boilers even upto 20 years old are fairly reliable and won't cost more than £100/per year on average for repairs including labour, work that out and you can afford a new all singing and dancing boiler every 5-7 years with a 3 year or more warranty. I have a 12 year old boiler back in UK, it has cost me the grand sum of £240 in those 12 years the highest cost being 2x starting PCB failures and one of the failures was at Christmas 2010 and I was unable to get one delivered from the internet so had to pay the full local price which even trade was £40 higher than the internet.
To replace my boiler with the same make higher rated boiler from B&Q is only £800 with the same connections and same quick mounting, I have had the usual calls telling me my boiler is inefficient but the replacements they offer have exactly the same specifications. The boiler industry is a licence to print money, just check on line the lowest cost of your boilers modern equivalent, very few for the average house are over £1200. my PC is slightly to the right of Genghis
2012 HSE SD4 In Orkney Grey now gone, best car ever.

Best not to get into a service contract but to find a local guy who knows about your boiler. I have a pressure jet Rayburn and originally had the "official dealer" come to service it. They put the wrong burners jets in and melted/distorted some of the internal baffles. Other guys have come who clearly don't understand these things but I eventually found someone who does specialise in AGA/Rayburns and have stuck with him.
I have neighbours with horror stories about service contracts on conventional boilers and there is one advertising on the radio now who talks about replacing your unit if it fails then in the fast talking T&Cs at the end mention paying the first £500. Overall message is find a local expert and stick with him/her. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE

Dorset, I suspect we have the same model! Mine is a 1999 480k with the MX Nu-Way burner. The service guys hate these with a vengeance for some reason. Mine wasn’t right from the beginning and i’ve still got a distorted cooker-side baffle, which I’ve not had the courage to replace yet. Parts such as blast tubes and oil pumps are getting expensive now and I feel I really should be changing the burner to a newer type, but I am reluctant to move away from one that I know my way around so well! 2005 D3 2.7 Auto
Previously:
2010 MY FL2 TD4e GS - Now gone at 199,500 miles, about 135,000 of them mine.
‘93 Defender 110 200TDi CSW
‘87 Defender 90 4 cyl Petrol
‘83 110 CSW V8 - best ever!
Range Rover 2-door V8 (not sure of year - 4-speed box and vacuum diff switch)
Series III SWB Diesel

Mine is a 480K installed in 2002 and has Ecoflam burners. The baffle plates issue was a real pain as it happened after the warranty ran out. Had a battle with Rayburn over it but they wouldn't budge even though their agent had serviced it. I found a local guy who has some sort of Rayburn seal of approval and he was the only one who would even attempt to sort it out. He basically had to take the thing apart and got a rebuild kit of insulators and baffles, the job took all day and cost me over £600.

The only problem I have had apart from that has been intermittent failure of one of the ignition coils. This manifested itself quite spectacularly in that there would be a bang and the hotplate would pop up (yes it's heavy) and a puff of smoke come out around the seal. I worked out that oil was being sprayed into the chamber and the spark wasn't coming for a few seconds such that an explosive mixture was ready for when it finally did spark. A new ignition coil fixed that. Apart from that and a few blast tubes it's been OK. I get it serviced every couple of years, they replace the nozzles and set up the emissions somehow with a meter.

Rayburns are excellent as a sort of life support system for rural dwellers in that the do everything from running the central heating, cooking , hot water and a nice warm object in the kitchen to lean against and a bottom oven useful for putting a new born lamb in if it's ill. (An AGA won't do central heating). However they are expensive to keep going and probably not as efficient as a conventional boiler. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE