Has anyone had to call out Baxi Heateam during this cold weather? As our central heating boiler has gone on the blink (literally - it's blinking everywhere!) I called the Domestic and General helpline yesterday at 0810 and after waiting quite a while got a response and a job reference number, but I have been trying ever since to get a reply on the Baxi service number. It's just continuously engaged - no message of apology or anything. I did manage to get back to D & G, who said that Baxi did not want to keep people on hold for a long time, which I can understand - but why no recorded message of explanation? I don't have a problem with having to wait for an engineer - they are obviously overloaded with calls, but I do have a problem with being unable to contact them at all. British Gas? .......

I'd love to do some cello practice, but can't do that while trying to use the phone every few minutes. Piano is a bit limited too ........

British Gas do a fixed price boiler repair service - http://www.britishgas.co.uk/products-and-s...ler-repair.html

It might be worth just paying to get it mended. We had a fixed price repair from them a couple of years ago and then joined their service plan. We've got the minimum cost plan - just the boiler covered and we have to pay GBP50 each time it's mended, but they do answer the phone and come out the same day to mend it.

British Gas have the same problems as everyone else at the moment. last year my sister's boiler broke just before Christmas and she didn't get the speed of service she was meant to. It seems beyond them to anticpate that they'll get more calls in cold weather.

Is your boiler a condensing boiler, Sue? If so, your condensate pipe may be frozen. This happens when the weather doesn't get above freezing for a few days. The symptoms can be a knocking sound, water leaking from the boiler or a complete shut down. If you know where the pipe is (it'll leave your house somewhere near the boiler) warm it up (hot water bottle, hair drier, the usual thing) and it may fix your problem. My poor friend had this two weeks ago and her pipe isn't reachable so she just had to wait for the weather to warm up. Our neighbour is a heating engineer and put extra lagging on ours last year (not pretty, but very succesful!) after it froze. He says it'll be an increasing problem with modern boilers if we keep getting these extended cold spells. The bit of insulation they normally have just isn't enough.

Someone told me that your repair plan can have in the small print that if the temperature is below -5 you have to leave your heating on full time, or you aren't covered. We left it on low last night as very low temperatures were expected.

Living next door to a plumber was a smart move!

Thanks for your replies.

Banjogirl - yes, it is a condensing boiler, but the pipe definitely isn't frozen. The problem would appear to be the air pressure signal/switch according to the flashing light sequence.
Andante - our system has been on 24 hours for the last 10 days or so.
Alicia Ocean - I'm surprised that you have to pay a callout fee every time you have British Gas out. Does this apply to all their plans?

I'm now doing a complaint via the D & G website.

No - it's the tariff we've chosen. It keeps the premiums down. Works for us.

No it doesn't - my mother has the same plan, where you pay ?50 per call out, but she said there were alternatives which were more expensive per month but no call out fee (so it depends on how often you are going to call them out as to whether it is 'worth it')

Our plumber is great, he's hard to get hold of for some things, e.g. we'd like a new bathroom and he came and measured up and months later we still don't have a quote. BUT, you phone him up, leave a message with words like 'leak' or 'water everywhere' or 'no heating', and he'll either call back instantly or be on the doorstep within five minutes!!

This maybe a "well, durrrrr" reply but have you tried letting in more water? My boiler does a blinking dance a when it needs more water (normally after I've just been bleeding the radiators). Does it have a pressure indicator on it?

Sorry if this is an obviously problem that you have ruled out.

No, this is not a problem that we have ruled out but I've no idea how you would let more water in - as far as I know it is set up to receive the right amount. There is no pressure indicator - not that you can see from the outside, anyway.

We switched to Br Gas from Alpha Aftercare (because of failure to provide annual service, sent contract engineers not trained for boiler, on top of poor answering & communication, poor show-up record, high failure rate on 'repairs', etc... wonder in retrospect why we put up with it). BG more expensive but not regretted it. In prev. years they've turned out promptly always, incl. in v cold Xmas period when the system broke down. So far, touch wood, haven't needed them this year - sorry to hear folks have had problems with them.

Frozen outlet pipe plagues us - ever since it was modified to meet latest regs. Marvellous. Agree standard insulation is useless. This year I lagged with bubblewrap + piled empty recycling boxes round danger spot (a bend in the pipe) after the first cold snap reminded me. Since then, no freeze-up. But there's a bowl permanently under the boiler in case - unsightly but this is hardly a show home!

I'm so glad I read this thread. My mother's boiler gave up on Saturday morning (it's a newish condensing boiler) and she called BG who eventually came Monday morning. (We had meanwhile negotiated the snow to get to her with electric heaters - she's 90 and not so speedy on her feet any more, and I could tell she was getting really cold from her speech over the phone - she had some heaters but ours were newer and more effective). When the gas man came he left the heating on constant (much to my mother's consternation), but now I understand, having read the thread, that it will hopefully prevent the pipe freezing again. He lagged the pipe and said it had been insufficiently lagged before - grrr. BG had installed the thing in the first place.

Normally there are taps under/near the boiler. There is normally a visible pressure gauge which sits in the red if there is not enough water. Turn the taps on until the pressure moves back into the green and then turn them off again.

Extra lagging may not be enough in this weather. Our fabulously well lagged pipe froze this morning. We've disconnected the pipe and it's currently running into a bowl. My husband suggested to our heating engineer (previously mentioned extra fabulous next door neighbour) that the pipe could drain into our kitchen waste pipe, to which it is adjacent, and he thought that was an excellent idea. Then almost all the external part of the pipe will be done with and the hot water washing from the sink will keep it all frost free.

We couldn't restart our boiler this morning but (did I mention him?) our lovely neighbour came and sorted it.

Well, I eventually got through to the service engineer number yesterday afternoon and, miracle of miracles, we had an engineer in this morning. Banjogirl, you were correct in your diagnosis - it was a frozen outlet pipe. We were looking at the wrong pipe when I said it wasn't frozen! The pipe in question was lagged with foam pipe lagging when the boiler was put in, but not lagged in its entirety, particularly on the right angled joints and the gaps where the pipe is fixed to the wall. I have been out and bought some more lagging today, stopped up the gaps and put a second layer over the first. Apparently though, any sort of lagging doesn't work if the temperature falls below -7.

When we told the engineer about the length of our wait for the phone to be answered he said that the number is used as a call centre for a long list of service companies and that it is overloaded in normal circumstances, so they are entirely unable to cope in bad weather. We're now registered with British Gas Homecare 200 and I am cancelling the other contract.

I'm glad you've got it sorted. Our lovely (did I mention him...?!) next door neighbour is going to alter our pipe so that it goes directly into the kitchen waste pipe, to which it is adjacent, and will therefore never have to go outside and won't freeze as the waste pipe constantly takes water flowing down it from the sink. It seems such an obvious solution that I don't know why no one's thought of it before. Our lovely neighbour also says he's now putting in much fatter pipes to reduce the likelhood of freezing. Too late for all of us who've already got the skinny ones in though, but at least we should be able to eliminate the problem for future years. he can't do the alteration at the moment as he's snowed under with mending people's boilers so at present our boiler's draining into a bowl. Luckily our boiler is in the cellar so even if we forget to empty the bowl it'll just soak into the cellar floor.