Making the case for a new school boiler

If you’ve ever tried to get a school boiler replaced, you’ll know the hard part isn’t the engineering. It’s convincing somebody holding a budget that the thing is genuinely finished, and not just annoying.

We’re on the wrong side of that conversation fairly often. A boiler we know is beaten, a business manager who believes us, and a funding case that has to convince someone who has never been in the room and never will be. That person only sees paperwork.

So this is about the paperwork, and about what we can and can’t do to help with it.

Evidence carries 60 of the 100 marks on a condition bid, and most heating records aren’t written to be evidence. Ask your contractor to name the component that failed each time, to confirm in writing any part that’s been discontinued, and to give a view on whether the boiler needs replacing within two years. Get the condition survey done independently — one written by the firm quoting for the work gets discounted rather than marked down.

The problem is usually the records, not the boiler

Most call-out notes read something like “attended site, boiler not working, reset and tested, left working”. That’s fine as a closing note. It’s how the trade has always written them, ours included when nobody’s asked otherwise.

As evidence it’s worth nothing. It doesn’t say which part failed, whether it’s failed before, or what happens next. Three of those notes look like three unrelated inconveniences, even when they were the same component going three times.

The version on the right took the same engineer the same five minutes. The only difference is that somebody asked for it to be written that way, and the time to ask is before you need it. Records can’t be improved retrospectively without them stopping being records.

What we try to put in a report

Not everything below is easy, and one of them most contractors would rather avoid. It’s all fair to ask us for.

Which part failed, and whether it’s been that part before. A fault history that shows a pattern is a different document from a list of visits, and it’s the pattern that does the work.

Whether the part is still available. If a manufacturer has discontinued a component with no direct equivalent, that’s a fact we can check and put in writing, not an opinion anyone has to take on trust. It’s also usually the moment the argument stops being difficult.

What it’s costing to run now. Efficiency falls away slowly and nothing tells you it’s happening, because nobody watches gas consumption closely enough to spot a trend. A boiler can be working perfectly well and still be quietly expensive.

Whether the boiler is actually the problem. Sometimes it isn’t. Old pipework and mismatched controls will make a good boiler look bad, and the Department’s own guidance warns about exactly this — new boilers that don’t work properly because of what they were connected to. We’d rather say so than sell you a boiler that inherits the fault.

And the awkward one: how long it has left. The rule here is specific. If the works aren’t needed within two years, the guidance says the bid is unlikely to succeed. So “it’s getting on a bit” is no help to you. You need a view on whether this plant is inside that window and why, and you need it in writing. Not everyone will give you that. We think you should ask anyway.

The one thing we can’t do for you

The company that wants to sell you the boiler should not be the one writing the survey that justifies buying it.

Your condition survey has to be independent and impartial, and anything that isn’t gets thrown out rather than marked down. That rules us out, and it should.

The same goes for a letter from us saying the boiler is old and ought to be replaced. Generic letters of support from professionals are explicitly not accepted, and rightly — anyone can write one. A dated record of what broke, when, and what it cost to fix is a different thing entirely, and that we can give you.

Think of it as the survey saying the plant room is in poor condition, and our records showing exactly how.

Two things that catch people out

Evidence carries 60 of the 100 marks on a condition bid. Not the quote, not the write-up — the evidence. That surprises people who’ve spent their effort on the wrong part of the form.

And going low carbon doesn’t get you round the condition test. Replacing gas with a heat pump is fundable, but sustainability on its own isn’t a reason — a low carbon project still has to prove the existing boiler needs replacing. A working boiler swapped out purely because it burns gas won’t score. If heat pumps are being discussed, the building fabric comes first anyway; an under-insulated block makes any new system look bad.

If the answer comes back no

It often does. Last round, 813 projects were funded out of 2,525 put forward.

If that’s you, the boiler still has to get through another winter, and the job becomes keeping it alive deliberately rather than reactively — knowing which components are closest to going and how long they take to source. That’s servicing and repair work, and it’s worth planning rather than waiting for.

The useful part is that it’s the same paperwork. A winter spent nursing an old boiler, properly recorded, is next year’s case building itself.

Common questions

Our engineer won’t put a remaining life estimate in writing.

It’s a judgement, not a measurement, so it should come with the reasoning attached rather than as a bare number. But a refusal to give any view at all doesn’t help you, and it’s reasonable to say so.

Can you write our condition survey if you’re not quoting for the work?

Better not to. Independence is about the relationship, not the invoice, and it isn’t worth risking the whole application on. Get the survey done independently and use us for what’s underneath it.

How far back should the records go?

Far enough to show a pattern, so usually a few heating seasons. If they don’t exist, start now. A short honest record beats a long reconstructed one.

We don’t know how old our boiler is or what it’s costing.

Most people don’t. It’s an afternoon’s work to find out.

If you want a hand with it

We do commercial and school heating across Essex and Suffolk, and we’re happy to go and look at a plant room and tell you honestly what’s in it — including if the answer is that it’s got years left yet.

The heating’s coming back on now, which is when an ageing system tends to show you what it’s really got. If yours is about to have an interesting winter, it’s worth having it written down properly while it happens.