In another thread someone made the comment "sensible people have an alternate way of heating and providing hot water anyway"... Which made me wonder how true that is?
Obviously most people with a hot water cylinder of some kind will have an immersion heater available as a backup, but what about combi boiler owners?
So of those of you with combi boilers providing all the hot water in the property, do you have a backup should the boiler fail? If so what is it, and how well do you find it works?
An electric kettle.
In another thread someone made the comment "sensible people have an alternate way of heating and providing hot water anyway"... Which made me wonder how true that is?
Obviously most people with a hot water cylinder of some kind will have an immersion heater available as a backup, but what about combi boiler owners?
So of those of you with combi boilers providing all the hot water in the property, do you have a backup should the boiler fail? If so what is it, and how well do you find it works?
2 electric kettles plus a gas hob. But sadly no footman or maid to carry the water to the bath. OTOH there's an electric shower over the bath. So all in all "adequate".
Please don't tell me you've fitted an electric combi in parallel as a fallback (and in readiness for the 2030 targets): I feel inadequate enough as it is
I have kettles and pans and fan heaters.... But when the combi fails none of them are really sufficient. Another reason I wish this house still had a hot water cylinder rather than a POS combi boiler.
What at £1700+VAT
Perhaps I'm being a little bit cynical but they do seem quite expensive, low demand?
Peter
I have a Steibel-Eltron instantaneous water heater plumbed feeding all HW pipework. 10kW give or take.
It does the sink, basin and fills a bath in about 30 minutes.
When I get a boiler fitted, it will remain as backup - with valves to isolate the boiler and it respectively. It's slow but it is more than good enough to live on and a lot better than cold water if the boiler dies.
Surprised more people don't do it...
Electric shower. Dishwasher heats its own, washing machine heats its own. Electric kettle, large stockpots.
For me it's one of the considerations when picking a system. It will fail, and secondary heating makes the difference between a very rushed job at pri ce to match and taking the time to get a good price. That generally makes i t worthwhile having some sort of backup. Time has proven the value of the s trategy.
But I bet most people scarcely give it a 2nd thought. Then pay through the nose for work that could easily have been avoided. But there's nothing new there.
NT
Same here.
I was wondering how to neatly have the shower fed by the combi boiler, but retain the electric shower as a fallback. I can only think of maybe using a mixer tap for the combi feed, and simply unscrew the hose to the elctric shower. But that would look a bit odd.
big pot and a stove
When I had a combi boiler the backups were electric shower, kettle, and a fan heater, and a good local gas fitter on speed dial.
Owain
Our electric shower is at the opposite end of the tub to the taps - I've considered adding a shower fitting to the tub taps.
I'd assume your boiler isn't going to be out of commission for long - so you could manage by heating water in a kettle and on the cooker?
Not having a bath or shower every day won't kill you. ;-)
At different times I have had an electric shower and an undersink store of 5 litres or so. While I think combis are just about OK for small, moderen, well insulated houses I generally hold them in the same regard that most of the NG do Saniflows. In the absence of a pressurised hot tank (ideal, but expensive and complicated) I think you can't beat a conventional boiler with an unpressurised hot water tank (immersion backup), especially with a booster pump to get decent DHW flow, if it's a larger house.
It's probably gone out of fashion here recently, but there was a vogue a while ago for self build heat bank systems on this NG. I put one together (s/steel hot tank, normal central heating pump, plate heat exchanger, and flow switch with homebrew electronics) about 8 years ago, and it's behaved well to date. The big advantage is that it provides mains pressure hot water without the expense and regular servicing needed by a pressurized hot tank, and provides better flow rates than a combi, epecially in the winter. .
A heat bank is really the the equivalent of a combi with heat storage, and because it includes water storage it can therfore have an immersion heater as backup. With a log burner for space heating this gives us decent backup both for hot water and space heating for power cuts and boiler failures.
Charles F
Queen Elizabeth I had a bath once a year - whether she needed it or not.
Nope, I have a unvented cylinder heated from a system boiler. Immersion heater backup.
It was a system that I looked at seriously for a bit, but in the end went the unvented route...
I do my own servicing on the cylinder - must take all of 15 mins per year. (The service procedure is basically manually operate the over pressure and over temperature valves and make sure they vent and then reseal as they should. Shut off the water feed, and check the inlet strainer is clear of debris. Check the pressure in the expansion vessel. Job done).
Indeed it will ;-)
Yup the thermal store / heat bank makes extra sense if you have other sources of heat you can dump into it like a plumbed in log burner with back boiler.
The main thing that can fail is electricity. Virtually everything needs it.
I have backup. It's called a wood fired stove. Also has hotplate for cooking.
Any backup has to be totally independent. ie not use electricity. I also have candles, torches and a small petrol generator (for freezers) I have telephones that don't need mains electricity.
I used to live in a very remote place which had power cuts. Often lasted for days.
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