Faulty boiler, repeated attempts to fix have failed

[meagain]

Shared house, 5 individual lets.

Our boiler developed an intermittent fault, which required the boiler to be reset on a regular basis. After a couple of weeks, it got to the point where the boiler simply would not light, leaving us without heating or hot water for a week while it was fixed. During that week, it took three visits before it was "fixed". Shortly thereafter, we were back to intermittent failures. It is now a month since the boiler was "fixed". Since then, we have had another four visits from the fitters, on two of those occasions they managed to put something right, and on the other two they were unable to find anything wrong, yet the problem still persists.

The failures started in early November, it is now the middle of January. During this time, we have been unable to predict whether or not we will have heating and hot water on any given evening, and as a result have been forced to run the heating constantly (this being the only way to guarantee that we have any heat in the house at all). Our estimated gas bill for the last quarter is 20% higher than our electricity bill, and over twice what we would have reasonably expected it to be had the boiler been working, and even then the actual reading is even higher than the estimate.

As it is a shared house, the boiler is located in my bedroom. I get text messages asking for the boiler to be reset (more often than not the person sending it is sat downstairs, but that's another problem entirely), and I'm the one who suffers when the boiler goes onto its "restart, fail, wait 10 minutes" cycle at 3am.

Since several attempts have been made to track down the problem (in the words of the plumbers on their last visit: "We can't find anything wrong with it at all, by all indications it should be working."), all of which have resulted in some disruption; we frequently find that the heating has cut out overnight leaving the house cold in the morning and without hot water; if today's visit from the plumber doesn't put an end to the problem, can we now insist that the landlord arranges for a new boiler to be fitted?

[lorwiggins]

Ok, so you may want to check with someone that has the full qualification rather than me who hasn't sat any exams yet but ....

The standards on repair of property leased for less than 7 years are set out in Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. There are various items that landlords need to keep in working order - installations for heating water and heathing the house is one of them. If the boiler is not in working order (and it has not been broken through negligence or misuse) because the landlord has not carried out reparis then in certain cases the tenant has the right to withold the rent until it is done. You will be expected to pay once it has been carried out however.

Do you have a agency that you got the lease from? If the landlord has gone via an agency then the agency should be dealing with this for you - you can speak with them and make your case because it is your right to have a properly heated house and a new boiler should be fitted rather than just fixed and re-fixed by the sounds of it.