Heating Engineer in Croyde, North Devon

Croyde is a surf village, and the heating pattern here follows the bookings rather than the weather. A large proportion of the property is holiday let or second home: full from Easter to the end of September, then largely empty through the winter with the heating either off or ticking over on frost protection.

Systems that work like that fail in two predictable ways. They lock out in the spring when they are asked to go from months of standing to full demand, and they fail mid-season when the property is at its fullest and a breakdown costs a booking rather than an evening. Neither is bad luck. A service in February or March catches most of it, and it is the single most useful thing an owner here can put in the calendar.

One thing to check before you call. Not every property around Croyde is on the mains gas network. I work on mains gas only, so if yours runs on LPG or oil I am not the right engineer for it, and it is better to establish that before a visit is booked than on your doorstep. If you are not sure which you have, look at whether there is a tank in the garden.

I am George Lane, Gas Safe registered. Croyde is about 22 miles by road from South Molton, and I cover it with Georgeham and Braunton on the same run.