During the winter we see a large amount of heating failures occur within the Council’s school estate. As a result of things learned by Property Services from attending to those breakdowns and with the expectation that there will almost certainly be further heating problems in the estate each winter, we have produced the following guide on what to do if this happens to you:

1. As soon as a heating failure is ‘diagnosed’ within your school please telephone the Property Help Desk on 01296 383238.  You must give the Help Desk as much detail as you can give, ie: is it a boiler lockout, a pump failure, is there a water leak etc?  Please indicate if it’s a particular section or the whole of the School affected and whether any faults are being highlighted on the heating control panel.  You must ensure that the Help Desk, during the heating season, are made aware that this is a High Priority situation.

2. The Council will arrange for its mechanical services contractor to urgently attend the school (as a High Priority reactive maintenance callout) to assess the situation and inform both yourselves and the Property Services team whether the faults can be readily fixed or a longer-term solution is required eg. Boiler replacement etc.

3. Using the Property Maintenance ServiceNow Form (located on the landing page of the SchoolsWeb’s Premises and Property section) you will then need to advise the Property Services team as to whether the school requires any temporary heating.  This will probably be in the form of individual calor gas heaters and can take up to 24 hours to organise because of demand.  You will need to indicate the number of heaters required, normally one per room or classroom, and these will be organised by the Property Services team together with all the necessary guards, gas bottles (including spare bottles) and their commissioning (including ventilation).  It is occasionally possible to arrange for a packaged temporary boiler room to be installed as an interim solution but this is not always possible, particularly if the heating failure is not due to a boiler failure, and it can take longer than 24 hours to organise.

4. It is appreciated that individual gas heaters would not be the preferred choice of most schools but there is normally no alternative; temporary electric heaters cannot be used as the vast majority of Schools are already using their maximum electrical capacity. The hire charge of the temporary heaters may be payable by the school (subject to their financial threshold if a maintained school) as part of the costs of the repair. The school also has to pay directly for the gas used and any refills.

5. The majority of recent heating problems are actually down to aged pipework failures and in most of these cases the failures were hidden within asbestos-lined underfloor ducts. Because of the problems surrounding any disturbance to asbestos and the continued operation of the school being paramount, this scenario is likely to result in a decision to abandon the existing installation, or at least the affected section of it, and install a new system which is both fully accessible and much easier for future maintenance.

6. The Property Services team will arrange for all the permanent repair work to be carried out but it has to be appreciated by the school that this can be time-consuming to ensure that any new installation is correctly designed, specified and procured.  Depending on the complexity, the time between diagnosis of a major defect and the completion of repairs can easily take between 8 to 12 weeks and has to be carried out around a working school.

7. Finally, I would reiterate the advice in the Boiler Procedures Before Holiday Periods page that although the school may be closed over winter holiday periods, the heating system must remain on throughout, albeit at a reduced level, to ensure that the pipework is not allowed to freeze up in cold temperatures.