Looking after your new utilities
From toilets to boilers, your utilities are essential features of your Charles Church home that you'll rely on daily. Here are some tips to keep them working smoothly.
Whether it’s your toilet, boiler or plumbing, it’s all too easy to overlook the utilities you rely on daily, until the day comes when they suddenly stop working of course. With these tips in mind, you should be able to prevent that happening!
Getting the best out of your heating system
A comfy home is a heated one, with hot water on tap whenever you need it. It’s why most of our homes are fitted with a highly efficient combi boiler, which heats water directly from the mains when you turn on a tap and pumps it out to the radiators around your home.
To get the best from your heating system we recommend running it continuously, to ensure a consistently cosy setting. Most of our properties also have thermostatic radiator valves so you can control the temperature of each room individually.
Servicing your boiler
Your central heating boiler and water tank should also be checked and serviced once a year by a maintenance engineer to ensure safety. It’s important to arrange this check as your warranty could be invalidated if you don’t – which none of us want.
You should also arrange an annual service for the pressurised cylinders in the cylinder cupboard. The law requires stored hot water in a cylinder to be maintained at a temperature of 55-60°C, which means the water from your taps can be very hot – so please take care.
Operating your heating system
If you’re planning to turn off the boiler, perhaps while you’re on holiday, simply switch the programmer control to ‘off’. To restart, turn the programmer control to its original position. Please note, if you’re going away during the colder months we recommend not turning the boiler off, but instead letting it operate continuously at a low temperature (minimum 10°C).
You’ll find all the operating and safety instructions for your heating system in your supporting paperwork, and can be confident that everything has been designed and installed in accordance with all the very latest regulations and standards.
Repressurising the system
You may have to repressurise the central heating system if it falls below 1-1.5 bar pressure. Resetting the pressure will enable the boiler to be refired, but be aware that regular topping up could lead to a dilution of the inhibitors in the system, which are normally topped up during a service.
Alternative heating systems
Some of our home are fitted with an alternative heating system, such as an Air Source Heat Pump, Ground Source Heat Pump or an HVAC system. The design and technology involved with these systems is constantly evolving to meet the demands that we are all being asked to achieve to reduce carbon emissions.
These systems have specific maintenance and servicing needs to ensure they are performing at their peak efficiency. Please familiarise yourself with the requirements of your system and schedule servicing as required to support the warranty provided.
Toilets
The cistern in your new home has been designed to meet new environmental guidelines and has a lower water content to reduce the amount of water wasted. This is the maximum size allowed in new properties, and you may discover it’s not always as efficient as larger cisterns found in older houses.
It’s important that you don’t flush any nappies or baby wipes down the toilet as it could result in an expensive blockage. We also recommend not using cleaning products such as ‘bloo cistern blocks’, which can deteriorate the plastic components in the toilet and damage the flush mechanism.
Plumbing
In our experience it’s always a good idea to check the water and waste connections to appliances and sinks after a day or two of use, as they can become loose. A dripping connection can cause a lot of damage in a short space of time, so it’s better to be safely secured than sorry.
Read the rest of our articles on caring for your new home:
- Looking after your new kitchen
- How to tackle any moisture in your home
- Looking after the electrics in your home
- Looking after the outside of your home
- Maintaining the external finishes on your home
- Looking after your windows and doors
- Looking after your new lawn and driveway
- Looking after your loft space and garage
- Safety in your new home
- How we support you after you move