Service and maintenance for heat interface units
The heat interface unit is the handover point between the heat network and the home. When it fails, a household is left without hot water and the clock starts running for you.
- 24 hours a day
- Call-out service, at weekends and on public holidays too
- Every make
- Interface units from every manufacturer, mixed within one building too
- Eight hours
- The threshold in the Dutch Heat Act that we build the service around
With a heat interface unit, service comes first
Planned maintenance brings the number of faults down. It never brings them to zero. A heat exchanger scales up, a controller drifts out of adjustment, a flow switch gives out. With heat interface units most of the work is therefore corrective: something has broken and someone has to come out today.
That is what we are set up for. The call-out service is the heart of what we do on heat interface units, and planned maintenance is the means of keeping that service quiet.
Every make of interface unit, mixed together too
We maintain heat interface units from every manufacturer. The build-up is comparable across makes: an exchanger for the hot water, a controller, a flow switch and a heat meter in the flow. What differs is the parts, the type of controller and the steps the manufacturer prescribes.
We record that per client. We map which unit types you have, stock the vans accordingly and work to the protocol that belongs to each type. Four makes mixed across your portfolio is no obstacle. You do not need four providers for it.
We are tied to no single supplier. When it comes to replacement we advise on what suits the installation and the network, not on what we happen to know best.
What the Dutch Heat Act asks of you when there is a fault
The duty to supply rests with you as the heat supplier. Where an interruption to the heat supply lasts eight hours or longer, the consumer is entitled to compensation, and that rises the longer the interruption lasts. The amounts are set in the Dutch Heat Regulation and are revised periodically, so we do not quote them here.
The law prescribes no attendance time. Nowhere does it say within how many minutes an engineer has to be at the resident's door. What it does set is that eight-hour threshold. In practice that is your outer limit, because that is where it starts costing money. We aim well inside it.
With a heat interface unit it counts per household. A fault in a substation hits the whole complex at once. With an interface unit it usually affects a single home, which looks smaller. But the entitlement to compensation applies per consumer. Forty units failing on the same cold morning are forty claims.
You must also record faults and publish that register annually. The Dutch regulator ACM supervises this. For every report we log the time it came in, what was done and when supply was restored. Those records go to you in whatever form you need.
- Reachable 24 hours a day, at weekends and on public holidays too
- Residents report directly to us or through your own channel
- Urgency assessed according to the rules we agree with you
- Remote diagnosis wherever possible, so that sometimes no visit is needed
- The engineer carries parts for the unit types you have
- Time of report, action taken and restoration logged per dwelling
- Feedback to you as soon as supply is running again
Our call-out service
The response time we agree with you is set out in the contract. That depends on your housing stock and on how far inside the eight hours you want to stay. We do not promise a time we cannot meet.
What actually breaks
The reports on a heat interface unit are fairly predictable. Anyone who knows them does not need a look-first visit.
- No hot water: the flow switch is not responding or the domestic hot water exchanger has scaled up
- Lukewarm water or a shower that fluctuates: the controller has drifted out of adjustment
- Hot water but no heating, or the other way round: that points straight to the right half of the unit
- A strainer clogged with debris, choking the flow
- Pressure lost in the home's system, leaving air in the radiators
- A heat meter showing no consumption or an implausible reading
- Ticking or rushing noise when drawing water, usually too high a pressure difference across the unit
A unit drifting out of adjustment rarely fails outright. The resident notices it in the water and eventually calls you. Those are the complaints you get held to account for as the supplier, while technically nothing has failed yet.
Why a second visit costs more than the first
A fault resolved on the first visit costs you one journey. If it is not, it costs two journeys, a new appointment with the resident and a longer interruption. That extension is exactly what decides whether you land inside or outside the eight hours.
That is why our engineers carry the parts for the unit types you have. We do not come out simply to diagnose. The aim is to resolve the fault on the first visit, and that does not always work but it usually does.
- Planned maintenance to a fixed protocol for each type of unit
- Testing the unit through, cleaning the strainer and re-balancing the controls
- Checking and replacing heat meters
- Fitting and replacing complete heat interface units
- Reporting per dwelling, in your own system if you prefer
Planned maintenance, to keep things quiet
It delivers two things. Fewer units fail, and the ones that do are already known to us. That saves searching at the moment the clock is running.
Who we do this for
Heat suppliers and energy operators carrying the statutory duty to supply, housing associations and managing agents with communal systems, and installation contractors who want to take pressure off their service department. Residents can report directly to us. We assess the urgency and report back to you.
Our patch runs from The Hague and Rotterdam through to Eindhoven and its surroundings. Our base is Houten. Almost every location in that area is around an hour's drive away, so an engineer can be there quickly even for a fault.
Wondering what this means for your installations?
Tell us what is going on. We will think it through with you, and say so honestly if something is not a fit for us.
Our other services
District heating substation maintenanceMaintenance on the substation that connects the building to the network Commissioning of heating systemsControlled handover with a report for every dwelling Back Office as a ServiceWe take over the customer contact and the administration Radiator and underfloor heating serviceWe resolve the complaints that do not sit with the unit Thermostats and controlsChoosing, setting up and explaining the controls Service & maintenanceContracts, the 24/7 call-out service and the Heat Act