Boiler Servicing in the Southside, Glasgow

Servicing in the Southside is shaped by tenure more than by architecture. Govanhill, Pollokshields and the streets around Victoria Road have a very high proportion of privately rented flats, a lot of them in Victorian tenements that were subdivided decades ago. That means a large share of the boilers we service belong to landlords and letting agents rather than to the person who will actually notice if the heating is weak in November. The practical consequence is that servicing tends to run on a compliance calendar, tied to the date the last certificate was issued, rather than on someone deciding the boiler sounds off.

It also means access is the part of the job that goes wrong, not the service itself. A tenant who has not been told we are coming, a key safe nobody has the code for, or a letting agent booking a slot without checking whether anyone is in, will cost more time than anything we find on the boiler. We would rather agree the access arrangement when the booking is made than turn up and lose the slot, so we ask about it up front on Southside bookings as a matter of course.

For owner-occupiers in the Southside the picture is different again, and the common problem is simply the gap. Flats that changed hands in the last few years often come with no service history at all, because the sale did not require one and nobody thought to ask. We see boilers here that have not been touched in five or six years, still running, quietly losing efficiency and voiding whatever warranty they once had.