What to look to in gas fired boiler insurance policies
What to look to in gas fired boiler insurance policies
Restoring a heating boiler after an unpredicted problem can cost you a lot of cash. You will also be without heating or hot water while you wait for an engineer to turn up. For peace of mind many individuals seek to protect themselves in an emergency by taking out boiler or central heating breakdown insurance.
There are a multitude of suppliers and a number of options to check when buying gas fired boiler care. With all policies for a monthly fee your provider will send round a heating engineer to try and fix your gas fired boiler when it breaks down. The regular promise is to try to call within 24 hours, this is a best endeavours target, no contracts will give a promise of a response time unless you pay a premium. Often priority is also given to elderly individuals or families with young children.
If you want you can extend the care to other services in your home such as the electrical wiring or plumbing and drains. In general the more care you have, the more expensive your regular fees.
You will need to check your requirements before you select the appropriate boiler care plan. You might want to expand the care beyond just the boiler to include your full central heating system and component parts. If you have aging drains you could want to include drains insurance.
Often a central heating boiler insurance plan will include provision of an annual central heating service. Due to safety considerations we recommend that have an annual heating boiler service whether you have a central heating system care plan or not. The message is get your central heating boiler serviced yearly, whether you have failure care or not.
Regular servicing can reduce the life-time cost of your central heating boiler and will certainly ensure that it operates safely. Many suppliers will also only insurance you if you have a twelve month service.
Sometimes there are policy exclusions such as these:
You may find the policy only contains one hours labour and a limited number of parts. This is unlikely to care you fully if you have a serious problem and you will be faced with extra costs.
Some central heating boiler care providers will not offer care on older boilers. Obviously you need to check this before you purchase the insurance.
Often terms and conditions change over the course of a year and you need to survey these before you renew your care. Some suppliers will not renew the care of your central heating if it reaches a certain age or becomes troublesome.
While you might be able to switch to another boiler care provider, it is recommended that you select one that does not contain a restriction on the age of the central heating system on renewal. Older heating boilers have more problems and hence they are sometimes not accepted by new suppliers.
If you are unlucky and have two breakdowns in one year you might find that some insurance policies stop cover. Depending upon the age of your central heating you may want to take out a plan that has unlimited call-outs.
You can reduce your monthly fee by selecting a policy that integrates a call out charge. If you do not have any breakdowns or have a younger central heating system this could be a good option for you.