Likewise with our Ideal Mexico Super 100 floor standing boiler which is now a good 30 years old. It's had the gas control valve replaced once and the thermocouple twice.
In view of the piss poor life and reliability of the condensing boilers (even of the "High Quality" units), it makes the use of an old car engine and a 10KVA generator head look a rather tempting replacement sometime over the next decade or two.
One of the contributory causes for 'kettling' being a lack of water 'head'. The higher the water pressure in the boiler, the higher the heat input you can get away with before 'kettling' occurs (IOW, the system will be more forgiving of all the other conditions which contribute to 'kettling').
When we had our floor standing Ideal Mexico Super 100 boiler installed some 30 years ago, I chose the basement location with this factor in mind. The other factors in this choice being that the slightly greater heat leakage from the longer run of the main flow and return plumbing (and the boiler itself) would contribute some useful winter heat into the basement and provide an element of 'underfloor' heating to the room above, as well as save space in the rest of the house and keep what modest boiler noise there was out of earshot.
Even the "Waste Heat" going up the 40 foot's worth of flue liner would make some useful contribution to the fabric of this old 3 story late Victorian property so I doubt the improved efficiency of a condensing boiler would be anywhere near as large as the rather boastful claims so often made for these boilers.
That's a 65% efficient boiler - so low it's not even on the current ratings scale. It's also around 30 kW, so if used anywhere near that constantly will produce pretty hefty gas bills.
As I said my Viessmann has already saved its replacement costs over the previous Potterton Kingfisher RS80 which is similar to your Mexico.
I love the opening line "a new condensing boiler can cost you as little as £1700" (is that some form of street value) Baxi Duotec 28he Boiler and flue £588 + vat (7yr warranty) Worcester 28ij Junior boiler and Flue £811 +vat
I'd guess they mean including fitting?
According to the performance data tables, it works out at just north of 79% efficiency. I don't know from where you plucked that "65%" figure but it would appear to be significantly wrong.
Or possibly worse than my 'Mexico' if that was the source of your "65% efficiency" figure.
Forgot to add that's where the figure for my old boiler came from too.
Is there one of these for oil fired boilers too? I am having a devil of a job to find anyone to even bother quoting me a price to replace mine.
I'd like to be sure I choose wisely. I am inclined at present towards a Worcester Danesmore maybe the wall mounted variety or external. New rules mean the replacement boiler cannot live where the old one is :(
The old SEDBUK datyabase has moved and is now here:
Oil- fired boilers are included
Seems to be broken here.
Thanks for that pointer. What I noticed was the lack of information regarding the from/to manufacturing dates and the mention of Caradon (instead of "Stellrad Group").
My reference is from the Installation & Servicing guide published November 1983. It is a 28 A4 page sized booklet which includes heat input and boiler to water output power in both KW and Btu/Hour quantities.
I simply divided the output by the input (for both the max and the min setting levels figures given in KW) shown in the performance data table and got a shade over 79% for both extremes.
The figures I used for the maximum boiler input and boiler output to water were, respectively, 37.00KW and 29.30KW which, as a percentage ratio worked out, by my calculation, to be 79.1892% which places it in the "D" rating band.
However, the SEDBUK rating is a bastard child of the UK government and the Boiler manufacturers and uses the weasel phrase "Seasonal Efficiency of Domestic Boilers" so I wouldn't put too much stock in those figures when it comes to actual boiler efficiency.
Thanks. Is there anywhere with an old fashioned list where I can see which ones have a respectable reliability figure and efficiency. My instinct is that they are overcomplicated and inclined to fail round here in the coldest weather due to icicles on the condensate drain!
Or blowing up their expensive motherboard for reasons not obvious.
Go to the search page, and select heating oil as the fuel, and a main type of "regular". Then hit the search button. You will get a big list of all the oil boilers.
They tend to include manufacturers multiple times when there have been notable names changes, Hence there are entries for Caradon Ideal as well as Ideal.
If you click thorough to the details for a particular boiler they also give the first and final years of manufacture where the data are available.
So for example the Caradon Ideal Mexico Super RS100 (i.e. not the fanned flue version) has:
Type Index number Status Gas and oil fuel boiler 000284 Normal Brand Model name Model qualifier Caradon Ideal Mexico Super rs100 Boiler ID* 4140747 Fuel mains gas SAP 2009 annual efficiency (%) 65.0 SAP winter seasonal efficiency (%) 66.0 SAP summer seasonal efficiency (%) 56.0 Comparative hot water efficiency (%) 37.7 SAP 2005 seasonal efficiency (%) 65.0 Efficiency category estimated (ie SAP default) SAP equation used Output power (kW) 29.3 Electrical power when firing (W) 0 Electrical power not firing (W) 0 Main type regular Condensing no Integral PFGHRD no Flue type room-sealed Fan assisted no Ignition yes Burner control unknown Mounting position unknown Exposure rating unknown Original manufacturer name Caradon Ideal Current manufacturer name Ideal Boilers Manufacturer address PO Box 103 National Avenue Kingston Upon Hull East Yorkshire HU5 4JN UK Manufacturer phone 01482 492251 Manufacturer website
Does it also give a corresponding gas rate, or indicate how that 37kW is derived?
Many manuals of the time would have shown a BTU/h input rate based on the gas rate multiplied by the nett calorific energy content of the gas. So in modern terms you get a somewhat underestimated input kW figure by around 10%
Does your calculation include the efficiency losses when cycling on part load?
Actually I would, since the assessment procedure is designed to try and factor in typical UK weather cycles rather, than just make an assessment at one fixed load under lab conditions. Hence it builds an overall efficiency assuming some of the year it will be running on part load, some of the output (in the case of conventional and system boilers) will be used for hot water production etc.
It also sticks to using the gross calorific value of gas as a baseline to eliminate the discrepancy often seen on older documentation that arose from the use of the nett value (and hence numeric efficiencies that could potentially exceed 100%)
All I can say is my old boiler had the same rating as yours - despite being RS which should be better - so the savings should be similar. It also had up to the minute controls.
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