How to guides - Re pressure your gas boiler
Has your boiler failed? it may just require a top up of pressure
In the depth of winter you wake up to a freezing house and no hot water, fearing the worst, you rush to take a look at your boiler reveals red flashing lights or maybe fault codes like F.22, F.75 (Vaillant boilers) F1 (Ideal boilers) E119 (Baxi boilers)etc, but don't fear, it may just need topping up with pressure.
Our How to guide will help you through the simple task of topping up your boiler pressure.
We have included a list of the common pressure related fault codes for the most common boilers in the UK at the bottom of this post.
Ability level : Easy
Tools Required : None
How do i top up my boiler pressure?
On most occasions its as simple as turning a tap to let the water in, then turning off when the desired pressure is reached. But before we go into detail, remember that most boilers are designed to work between 1 and 2 bar of pressure, if your pressure gauge is showing within this area and still does not work after resetting, then you may need a Gas safe engineer to look at your boiler as there could be a pressure sensor fault, which unfortunately needs a registered gas safe engineer to fix it.
Cant find the pressure gauge?
Normally the pressure gauge is located on the front of the boiler or under a drop down panel on the front. If not, check on the underside of the boiler as it can sometimes be hidden under there. The last option is a digital display, some modern boilers display the pressure on the digital display and on most occasions, the best way to view the pressure is to reset the boiler and watch the display to see the current pressure value pop up momentarily.
Typical pressure gauge on a Worcester Bosch combi boiler.
Once you have found the gauge, checked the pressure and confirmed that the pressure is too low (below 1 bar or in the lower red) we can start the simple repressurisation of the boiler. To do this we need to find the filling loop - which will be either integral (on the underside of the boiler or external ( on the pipes coming out of the boiler) see pictures below. The pipe will normally be a braided silver hose with a valve on each end and is either grey, black or blue.
Typical Vaillant boiler filling loop
Standard boiler filling loop
Typical ideal filling loop
Once we have found the filling loop, we can start to add pressure to the boiler. Watching the pressure gauge, slowly turn one of the valves and see if you can hear any running water or the pressure gauge rising, if not, once the valve is fully open, slowly turn the second valve and the pressure should start to rise. once the pressure has risen to around 1.5 bar turn off both valves. on most occasions the valve is open when the lever is in line with the valve body and closed when cutting across the valve.
After you have topped up the pressure in your boiler, the boiler must then be reset. There is normally a reset button on the boiler, but if not, the boiler can be re set by turning off the power momentarily. Once reset, your boiler will go through a start up sequence and if no fault codes appear, then it's time to check if your heating and hot water is now working.
Do you have a Worcester Bosch boiler?
Worcester make it harder to re pressure. To re pressure your Worcester boiler needs a "key" and on most occasions is left in place at the bottom of the boiler. you can view this Youtube video for more info.
Bumble Group Limited
The Unicorn
Main Street
Carlton
WF3 3RW
Company reg 14984774
© 2022 Bumble Group Limited
CONTACT US
CoverBee boiler plans are a home emergency service contract and not a form of insurance.
Repair requests
To prevent works on existing issues present before the plan was taken out, you will be unable to request a repair within the 1st 14 days on all our plans.
If you require a repair within the 1st 14 days of you plan start date, you can still contact us,
we will then supply you with a quotation for one of our approved engineers to carry out a one off repair.
After you have purchased your plan, we may contact you to arrange for one of our approved engineers to carry out your boiler health check. Our engineer will inspect your boiler and heating system (if included) to ensure it is working safely and confirm it meets the requirements of contract. If you report a problem with your boiler or heating before the health check has been carried out, we will still send an engineer, but your boiler must pass the boiler health check before the repair will be carried out under this plan.