A gas engineer is suggesting an Ideal boiler. I have always specified Vaillant in the past, but he says that they are now using more plastic parts. I don't want to get into a fight, so will Ideal do the job okay?
Anyone who 'suggests' you pay out £500+ for something probably gets them at a discounted rate, and when he gets a different boiler at a better rate, then that will suddenly become the best thing since sliced bread.
Why not just go out and buy your own boiler that exactly suits your needs and budget, then get quotes for someone to fit it if you don't feel up to it yourself?
Could also be familiarity - he may have never fitted a Vaillant, and not have the confidence to try something different.
Or find an installer who is happy to fit what you want.
I seem to recall geoff saying he gets a significant number of ISAR and ICOS PCBs to repair...
Perhaps... to be fair having done both there is not much difference. The ideal probably has slightly better documentation though.
I had an Ideal Logic+ 30kW fitted recently. Seems fine. I chose partly on the basis of the 5 yr guarantee. Of course, Ideal phoned me soon after to offer me an 'upgrade'. So I'm not sure if it's actually worth anything, and to remain valid I'll have to have the boiler serviced.
Rob
I think it must be a Logic+ system boiler, as he mentioned the 5 or 7 year guarantee.
I'm sorry, but I'm not clear which Ideal boilers ICOS/ISAR are?
Not current models by the looks of their web page... probably tell you enough about the reputation they built ;-)
Nothing wrong with plastic, provided it is correctly designed. Build quality of my new Vaillant "system" is much better than the Vaillant combi I had ~ 20 years ago.
Consensus here over the past few years puts Vaillant and Worcester Bosch at the top for reliability (ISTR that Which? might have said the same).
For what it's worth, my gas safe man (there for a completely different purpose but I always like to pick such people's brains) winced when he saw the Ideal boilers (we have two, fitted before my time but quite recently). He was a bit vague on what his reservations were but indicated that spares might be hard to come by in the future. He wasn't trying to make any money (though he did rub his hands, laugh and say 'it looks like I'll be back soon to fit new WBs or Vaillants'!), in fact he turned down the opportunity to service them as he didn't want to be responsible for their longevity and recommended an Ideal specialist would be a better bet. He wasn't very complimentary about the standard of the installation either....
Of course, that's a statistically insignificant sample of one and he may have been bitten by one in the past (!)
Don't touch them with a bargepole
I had a look at one of their Logic + combis recently, it seemed a little flimsy but not as noisy as the Isar or Icos oh and the pressure gauge was under the boiler, what a daft place to put it! I guess time will tell how reliable they are in comparison to the Isar/Icos although a lot of installers I know aren't keen on taking the risk!
-- David
The daft thing was, the actual mechanical build quality and fit and finish of the Isar was quite decent[1]. It also performed very well. It seems like its the electronics that let them down. (although I had no real problems with mine in the four years I had it, save for one failed temperature sensor)
[1] although the layout and design was not a patch on the Vaillant I have just done here.
Is that physically possible?
Its not the one man bands who install Suprimas, ICOS etc where the problem lies, its where you have housing estates across the country where vast numbers of these are installed because they are offered in bulk at low cost with a good spec,
Wasn't one of those dribble's flavour of the month not so long ago?
Even those with orange (v9?) PCBs?
Mathew
The orange turns a nice deep colour when the mains transformer melts
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