Boiler packed in on a Sunday? What to do before you start ringing round
Sunday is the worst day for a broken boiler and the worst day to find anyone. Here's the order to do things in — and how to find a heating engineer who is actually free today rather than one who might call you back.
The boiler goes off on a Sunday morning. No heating, no hot water, and a week of school runs and work starting tomorrow.
Most people do the same thing in the same order: look up three local heating firms, ring all three, get voicemail twice and a "we can book you in Thursday" once. By lunchtime nothing has moved.
Here is a better order.
1. Check the three things an engineer will ask anyway
Before anyone comes out, they will ask you these. Knowing the answers can save you a callout, and if it does not, it saves you time on the phone.
Is there power to the boiler? Check the switch beside it and the fuse board. A tripped switch is the commonest "dead" boiler there is.
Is the pressure gauge in the green? If it is at or near zero, the system has lost pressure. Topping it up is something most people can do from the filling loop under the boiler, and plenty of boilers start again once it is back to around 1.2 bar.
Is there a fault code on the display? Write it down. Every engineer's first question is "what is it showing", and the answer decides whether they need a part in the van.
If none of that moves it, you need somebody.
2. Stop ringing round. Look at who is free.
The problem with ringing round on a Sunday is not that there are no heating engineers near you. It is that you have no idea which of them is free, so you are dialling blind and hoping.
That is what Speedi is for. Every tradesperson on it sets their own light: green for free right now, amber for shortly, red for busy. The light runs down on a timer, so a green one means they said it within the last couple of hours — not last week.
So instead of five calls, you open the map, filter to heating, and message the people showing green. If you are nearby, that is heating engineers in Chorley, Preston or Blackburn.
3. If nobody is green, put the job out to everyone at once
Sunday afternoons are quiet. Sometimes nobody is showing free, and that is the moment ringing round wastes the most time — you are calling people one at a time who are all doing the same thing, which is not working.
Speedi does the opposite: tell it what the job is and how soon you need it, and the request goes to every matching engineer nearby at once. The first one to take it gets it, and you get their number.
Worth being straight about this: it does not always get taken. Roughly one request in five gets picked up. But it costs you one message rather than an afternoon of dialling, and while it is out you are not sat waiting on a callback that is not coming.
4. What to expect to pay on a Sunday
Out-of-hours rates are real and they are not a stitch-up: somebody is giving up their Sunday. What you want to avoid is the fixed "callout fee" model where £200 is gone before anyone looks at the boiler.
On Speedi you agree the price with the engineer directly, before they come. Speedi takes no commission on the work, so the number you agree is the number they get — which is also why they are usually straight with you about it.
5. While you wait
- Turn the boiler off at the switch if it is making an unfamiliar noise.
- If it is leaking, put a bowl under it and turn the water off at the stopcock.
- Leave the heating controls where they are. An engineer wants to see it as it failed.
- Find the paperwork. Boiler make, model and last service date, if you have them.
The short version
Check the power, the pressure and the fault code. Then stop dialling and look at who is actually free — that is one message instead of five calls, and on a Sunday it is usually the difference between today and Thursday.