We've been struggling on with the old Baxi gas back-boiler for far too long, largely because of the lack of convenient siting for a modern wall-hung boiler, along with need to completely re-arrangeme the pipe work that it would entail. But - now there is a Baxi BBU, a condensing direct replacement (allegedly) to fit in the fireplace where the old one lives.
It looks promising, well except for the fact it IS made by Baxi!! but there is no other choice as far as I can tell.
Advantages seem to be, apart from the obvious of not having to relocate all the pipe-work, 1) it is room-sealed - the old one isn't, 2) it is claimed 90% efficient, and even if that's an exaggeration, it's surely an improvement over our cast-iron jobby which is no doubt well less than
65%, 3) The bulky gas-fire front which we don't use can go, and be replaced by a flat fire-front or nothing, freeing up some space in the room.Disadvantages: 1) Needs a condensate drain. Not a problem here as we have an under-floor space and its not a major job to route it to an outside drain. 2) Only one size is available (15kW). I would go for a bigger output if changing to a wall-hung but this should give at least as much as we get from the old Baxi which just about keeps us warm enough, and is probably producing well less than 15kW output anyway.
I would dearly love to rip out all the existing system and replace it with a super-duper sealed system, but for various reasons that's not practical at present, so unless there are any nasty gotchas that I've missed I'm inclined to bite the bullet and give this Baxi a go.
What do the team think?
Phil