CH boiler replacement advice

[Mj]

Hi all,

I've come to the conclusion that my gas CH boiler needs updating. I've currently got a 14+ year old Potterton Kingfisher 2 CF80 floor standing jobbie with a cast iron heat exchanger. A rather old hot water cylinder provides us with a gravity fed hot water supply with a poor flow rate (bungalow), we also have a 100,000 btu heat exchanger in the central heating circuit to heat our swimming pool. The pool heat exchanger is on a manually switched 3 way motorised valve so we can divert some or all of the flow from the heating circuit as & when we require the pool heated.

I can only estimate that the boiler is about 65% efficient so I'd like to change an A rated condensing boiler to save some cash. I like the concept of a thermal store system (Geldhill gulfstream type thing) so we can have the benefit of mains pressure hot water but don't know how this would integrate with our pool heating requirements. Would we be better off with an A rated condensing combi, if so what would the learned recommendations of the group be as to a robust & affordable model and how would it's hot water flow rate compare with the thermal store products?

Thanks in advance for your input

Regards MJ

[Heliotrope Smith]

The answere is sure to be install two of everything.

The V.I. has been hibernating of late but is sure to stir now with some outlandish plan involving cobbling together umpteenboilers and vented (non explosive) mains pressure cylinders...................

[John Stumbles]

Sounds reasonable, though I'd be inclined to go for separate boiler and thermal store rather than an all-in-1 package which leaves you stuck with a very expensive replacement if the boiler bit goes NBG. Have a look at this

general guff on some different types of DHW systems. As for boilers of the main brands Worcester-Bosch and Vaillant are good bets, maybe also glow-worm. Baxi/Potterton have a poor track record in recent years but are offering 5 year warranties on some models

[Ed Sirett]

Some general advice in the BoilerChoiceFAQ.