Your boiler should be serviced once every 12 months, particularly on new boilers to protect their warranty. Failure to regularly service your boiler means that faults and leaks could be missed, which can result in expensive repairs further down the line, or possibly the need for replacement. 

If you smell gas, and you think you have a leak in your house, you should leave the premises and call the Gas Emergencies Number as soon as possible, which is 0800 111 999.

A typical boiler service should only be an hour job, which would be in the region of £70 - £100 +VAT in London. Capital Heat Ltd charge £85 +VAT as a fixed price for a boiler service and safety certificate. 

Servicing a boiler depends on the boiler type, make and manufacturer requirements, but in general during a service heating engineers check for gas leaks, the gas rate (checking the boiler is burning the correct amount of gas over a period of time), a combustion analyser test to ensure the boiler us burning correctly, a visual check for leaks and corrosion, checks for correct operation of fan and pump, a clean of the condensate trap, boiler pressure check and gauge functionality, an operational check on heating and hot water controls, and finally monitoring the level of and concentration of inhibitor in system to ensure that heating system is protected.

One of the biggest dangers of not servicing your boiler, is that your boiler could be burning incorrectly, which means that you could have a carbon monoxide leak into your house, which is extremely dangerous. 

It isn’t a legal requirement to have your boiler serviced, however for landlords it is a legal requirement to have a Gas Safety check on appliances once a year. 

Your boiler doesn’t need to be serviced annually by law, but doing so can mitigate the risk of dangerous carbon monoxide being leaked into your house, and it can also prevent the corrosion and deterioration of the boiler, which can result in expensive work needing to be carried out further down the line.