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Getting Your Heating Ready for Winter: A Checklist
The best time to find a heating fault is before you need the heating. This autumn checklist keeps you warm all winter with no nasty surprises.
Sarah Mitchell
Energy Efficiency Advisor28 Jun 2026Updated: 28 Jun 20264 min read
Key takeaways
Reading time — 4 min
Expert reviewed — Practical guidance from our heating team
Nobody wants to discover a heating problem during the first cold snap, when every engineer is fully booked. A short checklist in autumn means you head into winter with a system you can trust.
Your autumn checklist
- Give the heating a test run for an hour and listen for unusual noises.
- Bleed your radiators to clear any trapped air from the summer.
- Check the boiler pressure and top up to 1–1.5 bar if needed.
- Test your thermostat and timer, replacing batteries where fitted.
- Book your annual service early before the winter rush.
Do not forget the extras
Bleed a cold spell into your plans: check that outdoor condensate pipes are lagged so they cannot freeze, and locate your stopcock and boiler reset button now, so you are not hunting for them in an emergency.