Heating Engineer in Instow, North Devon

Instow sits on the east bank of the Torridge looking across at Appledore, with the sand, Marine Parade and the Tarka Trail running along the old railway line behind it. It's a small village, well under a thousand residents, but the housing isn't small at all: a lot of Instow is substantial detached property, and a good proportion of that is second homes and holiday lets.

Bigger houses mean more heating system to go wrong. Instow has more than its share of unvented hot water cylinders, multiple bathrooms and systems running two or three heating zones. Those systems are reliable when they're looked after and expensive when they're ignored, and the annual G3 cylinder service is the part most owners don't realise is a legal requirement on an unvented cylinder.

I'm George Lane, Gas Safe registered and G3 qualified for unvented cylinders. Instow is about 18 miles by road from South Molton, around half an hour, and I pass it regularly on the way between Barnstaple and Bideford.

An empty property over winter is the usual source of a spring breakdown. Frost protection set properly, the system left ticking over at a holding temperature rather than switched off altogether, and a service before the season starts will take most of that risk away. If you let the property out, the CP12 is due every 12 months, and I'll time it around a changeover so nobody loses a booking.

You'll get an answer. Ring or message during the working day and you'll hear back the same day; evenings and weekends, it'll be the next working day. And if it isn't a job for me, I'll tell you that and point you at someone who can help, rather than going quiet on you.

When you book, I'll confirm it and give you a two-hour window rather than a whole day sat at home waiting. On the morning you get a text with a tracking link, so you can see where I've got to instead of wondering. Traffic and the job before yours are real, so it's a window rather than a promise to the minute, but if it slips you'll hear it from me first.