Boiler cost comparisons

[IMM]

You could. That is what the Yanks do with them. Chaffateux converted one to a CH boiler.

[IMM]

performance.

A lousy solution. Sensible people would not suggest such tripe.

My God! he actually thinks he knows something about this field. Sad, very sad.

It was all wrong.

< snip more tripe >

[John Rumm]

OK Reading between the lines here:

I am getting the impression that your boiler must already be connected to your hot water cylinder.

(If your cylinder was heated only by the immersion as it first sounded, then the boiler and central heating settings would have no effect at all on the amount of hot water available).

That complicates matters somewhat! Your plumber will be able to discuss options for improving the performance of your current setup if its not up to its current job.

Apologies if I am barking up the wrong tree, but I think you might have a slight misunderstanding about how your current boiler operates. The boiler itself will not directly heat the water that fills your bath. Instead it has a loop of pipework that leaves the boiler and the returns to it. There will be a pump somewhere that just circulates this same water round and round, each time it goes through the boiler it warms it up a bit. The radiators are connected between these feed and return pipes, each time the water goes through these they cool it down again before it goes back to the boiler.

Your hot water cylinder can also be connected in a variety of different ways. Most cylinders that are heated from a boiler will have a coil of pipe inside them, through which the water heated by the boiler can be pumped. This enables the heat from the boilers water (which will be contaminated and stagnant) to pass to the water you get in your bath without actually getting mixed into it. If you look at this type of cylinder you would expect to see four piped connections to it. One will the cold water in from you tank in the loft (typically fed into the bottom of the cylinder), one will be the hot water out (top), and the other two will be the feed and return for the hot water from the boiler (typically middle and bottom).

It could be you have a very simple setup at the moment with either the hot water cylinder relying on unpumped convection circulation of water from the boiler, or it has actually been installed "just like a radiator".

In the first case you will get slower and less efficent heating of the cylinder, in the latter you will have the cylinder and the radiators contesting for the available heat from the boiler.

You may well be able to get better performance with the setup you have by having your plumber improve the way your boiler heats your current cylinder. Also raising the temperature of the water stored in the cylinder will allow you to mix more cold with it when running a bath, giving you more "bath temperature" water.

[John Rumm]

Same old IMM, run out of argument again...

About time you called me you current word of the month... Are you still on "mentalist", of have you looked up a new one?

[Ed Sirett]

It is stated as a fact, but one which mostly I do not agree with. There are a huge range of taps available some of which come out of walls and some of which will work on low pressure supplies.

I will say that if you want water that comes (aerated) through an aeration nozzle you will need a pressure of 1 bar + which can be acheived with a booster pump.

[Ed Sirett]

No. Specifically in this matter some taps are designed for high pressure supplies and fitting them to a low pressure supply will give an inadequate flow rate even when they are turned fully on. You can get away with this on a kitchen sink where the cold is OK and the hot is poor since the amount of hot water required is not great.

[John Orrett]

Hi all; finally got the plumber round last night. He reckons that the existing boiler is fine, leave the immersion where it is, and we are getting a 'shower bath' with taps on the bath itself . Fingers crossed it will be a straightforward job! Many thanks to all of you who have taken the time to respond. Best wishes, John

[Andy Hall]

Not a bad idea. You can always upgrade the HW arrangements if you need to do so.....

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It may be, but he's misinformed. What he probably means is that the taps are designed for high pressure water. And therefore - but not exclusively

- not suitable for a storage system fed from a header tank which *might not* supply enough pressure.

But how the water is heated is irrelevant.

There are also ways of increasing the pressure from a header tank system. These will almost certainly be much cheaper than fitting a combi.

[Capitol]

Bloody hell! Commonsense at last. You are obviously a heretic living dangerously round here! I agree, and it's worth keeping a loft tank for when the water company fails to deliver the service their propaganda promises.

Regards Capitol