Intergas tears up rule book on boiler service intervals
Innovative boiler manufacturer, Intergas, is introducing a new service protocol for its smart boilers that will benefit installers and their customers. All Eco RF boilers installed from 1st May 2019 will now only need to be serviced after 1,700 hours of operational use, rather than every 12 months. The RF technology embedded in the boiler, together with the Intergas LAN Gateway, will enable the installer to track boiler performance remotely from a specially developed Service Dashboard. The installer will receive an alert when the boiler is approaching 1,700 hours so that a service visit can be arranged. Once market uptake has been assessed, the new low NOx boilers, the Xclusive and Xtreme, will also become eligible for a 1,700 hour service.
Speaking about this new servicing scheme, Stephen Zouch, Managing Director, Intergas, said: “It has never made sense to service a boiler based on an arbitrary date in the diary. If you don’t use your boiler for months at a time, why should you pay for a service at the end of 12? Using data from the Netherlands, where Intergas’s RF technology has been in operation for the past seven years, the optimum time to carry out a service is after 1,700 hours’ usage. The motor industry has used this system successfully for decades, and we have the ability to do the same.”
This is a fundamental change to the way boilers are serviced, Zouch explains. Not only will it cut down on unnecessary servicing, it will provide installers with an opportunity to grow their business from existing business. Now they can monitor boiler performance regularly and remotely, update customers on potential maintenance issues, which can often be resolved off site, introduce new products or services where appropriate and continue to service customers boilers, after 1,700 hours instead of 12 months, too. This level of customer care is not possible when your only interaction is arranging the annual service, and evidence from the Netherlands shows that customers will pay for this support.
To monitor the Eco RF boiler, installers will need to buy the LAN Gateway and install the Service Dashboard onto their tablet, laptop or PC. The Service Dashboard provides a detailed view of boiler performance in real time, and the facility to change parameter settings remotely where appropriate. There’s a free app too, so that installers can keep track of the boiler while on the go.
If a customer doesn’t want to use the monitoring and maintenance technology to carry out the service at 1,700 hour intervals, then the boiler must be serviced annually. The Intergas servicing hours protocol does not apply to the private rented sector, as landlords are legally obliged to carry out a gas safety check (commonly known as a CP12) on the boilers in their properties once every 12 months.
Will boiler servicing by hours of use be adopted by other manufacturers? It could be, providing they have the software to track it accurately. At the time of going to press, none had introduced this scheme onto the UK market.
