Boiler scrappage scheme "is financial madness for homeowners"

[ARWadsworth]

Well it is acording to Chris Mullins the MD of Pimlico Plumbers.

I am not sure that it is financial madness

How many boilers of 3 to 6 years old really have to be ripped out as they are uneconomical to repair? Some boilers have a 5 year guarantee so they should cost the owner nothing in repairs for 5 years.

My combi has been fine for 5 years and my parents combi is at least 11 years old and has only had to have a new switch fitted and that cost less than £50 including labour.

Anyone else got any views on the scrappage scheme being "financial madness"?

I for one would use it if I had a G rated boiler.

Adam

[Matt A]

I have a 25+ year old boiler and I am attempting to get mine replaced :-) Not sure my boiler is even good enough to be classed as G rated!

[smelly]

We haven't touched ours since we moved in here 15 years ago. Might as well wait 'till it breaks. Besides, I'm skint.

[Hugh Jampton]

Ours is 21+ years old (G rated) - here when we moved in 21 years ago. Had it serviced a few months back and suggested to the service chap that perhaps we needed a new one. He simply said why ? - it's in good condition and did we really think we'd save money.

He added that he used to work for a *big* gas company and he was forced to try to get customers to buy new all the time. He hated lying to customers. He left that company and joined a much smaller one.

Guess we'll have to get a new one before too long but this one's still working well after all these years :-)

[Matt A]

I thought that g-rated boilers are only 50% efficient (ish), and thus a new A-rated one is around 90+%? Thus should be be looking at a good drop in the amount of gas use?

The downside is that I shall have to install a rad in the kitchen though :-(

[ericp]

Use a wet plinth heater. A bit expensive but a reasonable heat output

[Andy Cap]

Nice to hear a honest opinion for a change. How much more do boilers with a 5 year guarantee cost ? Gas consumption is just one factor in the cost of running a boiler. Depreciation, cost of servicing and reliability are collectively a far more significant figure but never mentioned in any of the material by either the industry or the green-lobby.

Andy C

[Roger Chapman]

IIRC from the last time I argued the case if you have to borrow to replace your working boiler there is little likelihood of you ever being financially better off as a result however long the boiler lasts.

If you use your savings to finance the boiler there is a chance to make money in the long term provided the boiler lasts long enough and indeed if gas prices go up much faster in the next 20 years than they have in the last and your new boiler lasts that long as well (fat chance) you would make a very healthy profit on your investment as long as you are currently a heavy user of gas.

So my advice to anyone contemplating replacing a relatively modern boiler with a seasonal efficiency around 65% is if it ain't broke don't fix it even if you can afford a new boiler and however crap it is if you have to borrow the money to replace it wait till it does fail.

For the truly green (assuming they do in fact exist at all) the calculation would hinge on the balance between the energy consumption of the existing boiler and that of the replacement plus the energy expended in scrapping the old and manufacturing and installing the new. Such figures do not appear to be available which tend to suggest that the true greens are extremely thin on the ground when push comes to shove.

[<me9]

[ARWadsworth]

Nothing extra if you buy a Ferroli. I have wired a few up recently where the customer (usually a landlord) chose the boiler. The 5 year guarantee at no extra cost sold the boiler. There may be other manufacturers doing this as well.

Is there a difference is servicing charges for an old boiler and a new boiler?

I wonder if better savings could be made by keeping the old working boiler and adding proper time controls, TRVs and a room stat? Many of the old boilers that I see being removed have very few controls over them.

Adam

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I added TRVs to most rooms, a programmable stat which sets the temp for different parts of the day in the largest room, and a pump over-run to mine. They do save some gas - but nothing like a more efficient boiler. I changed my boiler when the gas price went up by so much a couple of years back. The old one was till working fine.

[Roger Mills]

There certainly is if the existing boiler is of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" variety, like mine is. Mine has been serviced about 3 times in

18 years - failing to work properly after the first couple of services, resulting to having to recall the 'engineer' to fix it. The bloke who serviced it most recently (the same bloke who installed it when new) said that it was really waste of time because it was clean as a whistle inside. On the other hand, AIUI, condensing boilers *have* to be serviced at least once per year - if only as a condition of the guarantee.

Absolutely! Insulating your house and fitting proper CH controls with room and cylinder stats and a boiler interlock - preserably also with sub-zoning or, at least, TRVs - will give a far better return than replacing the boiler.

I would never replace a working boiler unless there was a genuine problem with reliability or the availability of spares. Unless you use an astronomical amount of gas, the break-even point (taking account of higher servicing costs) is likely to be approaching ten years - and not many condensing boilers will last that long, by all accounts!

[John Rumm]

The validity of this argument does however depend on how much you are spending on gas... the less your annual bills the less incentive to change. OTOH, if you are paying £1500/year for gas, and you can DIY the new boiler, a 30% reduction in bills could make it economically viable even if the new boiler needed replacing every 5 years.

[Usenet Nutter]

I asked Alpha about this and they said their warranty ( 3 years ) had no such condition . I have also seen it suggested in here that an annual service is throwing money away .

[Dave Liquorice]

I'd certainly be looking at replacing a G-rated boiler but the =A3400 grant would only be a small factor in the decision. Bigger is the saving in fuel, maybe about 30% in reality. I'd also be looking at the makers warranty very hard and going for one with at least 5 years parts & labour and preferably with their own engineers.

I expect a boiler to last at least 10 years, our current one is about

15 but it is basic, a big lump of cast iron (holds 12 gallons of water) and an oil burner so very little to go wrong. It still manages

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Exactly what I worked out. I was also doing a major refurkle of the bathroom - and changing the boiler after that would have been a pain. If you've got a very well insulated house and small bills things change. As it does if you've got to pay someone a couple of grand for a day's work. ;-)

[Andy Cap]

Yes, in the sense there's not much to do. Changed 4 thermo couples and a cap at a total cost of £135 in approx 30 years. Clean it out thoroughly and also rust treat the flue and all surrounding metal work and it looks like new inside and always have a CO detector mounted close of course.

I fitted TRVs and a digital roomstat a couple of years ago. Funnily enough I was looking at this only yesterday. I used 15000 KWs in 2004 and have used 11700 over the last 12 months. Just before Christmas I doubled the insulation in the loft and so I expect to make a bit more saving from now on.

I reckon changing over now, which I guess I will have to do soon, will save £130/annum, but the bottom line is, that compared to a basic kettle, all the technology in a modern boiler costs, in more frequent installation costs, more regular servicing and higher failure rates.

Andy C

[dennis]

Why would a truely green person install a gas boiler in the first place when there are other solutions that save more carbon.

[PeterC]

I asked a chap who specialised in Vailant boilers about servicing. Although he had a vested interest, he said that there was very little to do and it wasn't worth it. On his advice, I clean the condensate drain and check the air pressure and after 11 years it's still working well[1].

[1] Apart from running the pump once a month, it's off for 5 months of the year and the DHW is v. rarely used.

[Roger Chapman]

You have a point there but it does also go to reinforce the notion that truly greens are very thin on the ground as, even if they wouldn't dream of having anything so wasteful of carbon as a gas boiler, they would be extremely keen to persuade the not so green to pursue the minimum carbon option for their chosen lifestyle.