In 2010 my mother replaced her gas boiler. Old cast iron lump with vertical flue with a Glow Worm. Supplied by British Gas. Even though I told her not to...
It's gone wrong, and the guy looking at it reckons it's had it. That's a surprise to me... is it likely, or is he another cowboy?
Assuming it isn't repairable, what's the current view on boiler manufacturers?
The one she has is wall mounted, and it's got about 80cm headroom (above the fridge, below the ceiling). Also the exhaust shouldn't be too high up, it's a chalet style house.
Why do you assume that? Most gas fitters, or their wives/partners, make more money by dismantling and selling the bits. It's a very buoyant market created by so many being persuaded to get a new boiler when the old one just needs a new part.
The problem is that companies like British gas seem to always condemn boilers and then offer what seems a good deal on a new one. I suspect some kind of scam going on myself. I have a friend who went down this route and the new one has been nothing but trouble cutting out and the old pipe work making strange noises despite being flushed etc. Next time they will not be so hasty to get new boiler I can tell you.
All boiler faults are repairable, bound to be parts available, but what has to be considered is the cost versus likely life once repaired. What has this guy said has failed on the boiler?
The more recent the boiler, the shorter their working life seems to be and the more complex they become. First boiler, an old Glow Worm lasted almost 30 years and repaired up a few times cheaply.
We were persuaded to replace it with a more efficient condensing Ideal. That was more complex, more complex to repair and became uneconomic to continue repairing it due to cost of parts versus a new boiler. Present one is a Vaillant, installed a year ago, has much better diagnostic abilities built into it and a neat display.
The ability to diagnose part xxyyzz being defective and finding that the part is obsolete or costs nearly as much as the original boiler?
Even the humble ink cartridge has diagnostic abilities these days. For who's benefit though ? At one time boiler bits could be "adapted" to fit and ink cartridges refilled but progress means that the very semiconductors making up the diagnostic chain lock the consumer into the suppliers pricing structure.
Much like vehicles too, but would you want a vehicle these days as basic as an Austin 7?
Our new Vailant can inteligently decide just how much heat it needs to produce to meet its desired room temperatures, taking into consideration the outdoor temperature and indoor. It doesn't overshoot, rather it learns what is needed and can modulate right down to match the demand. The pipes don't creak and moan anymore.
The previous boiler either ran and produced full heat, or none, though it did modulate, it only modulated based on its internal temperature.
Yes. My parents' first boiler lasted about 37 years with only a replacement "thermocouple" in that time and was still working fine when they got rid of it.
They only got rid of it because it was behind the gas fire, in the living-room, and prevented them changing the fire as no alternative designs that fitted to it were in production.
The replacement wall-hung boiler, in the kitchen, has had a replacement fan and two replacement control boards in the ten years since!
Our own experience has been our first boiler lasting 9 years, but with a number of repairs (DIY fortunately - fan motor a couple of times, pressure switch) and the final time (an internal leak and an intermittent control board fault) it being only around £30 more to get a new boiler than parts, due to a clearance sale locally. The replacement (non-condensing) and fairly simple has been in about 17 years, but suffers failed fan bearings every three years or so - which I can easily replace.
Well, I really am willing to be educated, but I really don't understand what it is supposed to be doing to "intelligently" decide something. Firstly, I assume that as with almost any device, it will have a "sweet spot" where it is working at its highest efficiency. Its specs may state "85%" efficient, but in practice that might mean from a low of 82% to a high of 88%. Now it should be operating as near to 88% all the time as it can, but obviously there are constraints - it won't be so efficient starting from cold, for example.
As far as I am concerned, when the room thermostat calls for heat, the boiler should go flat out to heat the room as quickly as possible. In any case, it's the room thermostat which tells the boiler what to do, and it's the thermostat's hysteresis which is the arbiter of how comfortable or uncomfortable you will be. I've switched ours to the lowest hysteresis possible, which is +/- 0.5 deg C. That may mean the boiler in on/off more frequently, but I'm a lot more comfortable with the room at a steady 20.5 - 21.5 deg C, than I would be at 19 - 23 deg C.
And does it really matter most of the time what the outside temperature is? It will almost always be much lower than the room temperature, and so maximum heat will be required to warm the room up.
Having said all the above, I see from the manual of my W-B Greenstar that : "The gas supply to the burner is controlled according to the level of demand for heat. The boiler operates with a low flame if the demand for heat reduces. The technical term for this process is modulating control. Modulating control reduces temperature fluctuations and provides an even distribution of heat throughout the home. This means that the boiler may stay on for relatively long periods of time but will use less gas than a boiler that continually switches on and off."
Out of interest, does your boiler's spec state that it is most efficient when it is ticking over (or whatever it is doing to decide what heat it needs to supply)?
So exactly how does the boiler do what it's supposed to do? You set the boiler hot water temperature to the rads at, for example, 60 deg C, and you set the room temperature thermostat to 20 deg C, and the hysteresis to 1 deg C. How exactly does it (in the case of my W-B Greenstar) "operate with a low flame if the demand for heat reduces"? How often does the "demand for heat" reduce?
True, often saying the parts are obsolete. What they mean is that BG no longer stock the parts but often they are still available from the manufacturer for very many years afterwards.
Not true. They will start with a very high price and then offer a large discount and/or trade-in on the old boiler ending up with a price that is often twice that of the competitors.
They get commission when selling or providing a lead that results in a new boiler.
I had the boiler installed 14 months ago and I only recently added the fancy controls. Until then it just had simple time clock and switching stats controlling it. Then the boiler in operation was very noticeable from both the noise from the boiler in operation and the ticking of heating and cooling pipework.
Now the entire system is much quieter, because it knows it doesn't have to run flat out, it knows how much heat input is needed so it can modulate to run at a much lower level of burn. Before, it only modulated down, based on its return temperature and often shut down completely only to then light up again a few minutes later, because the demand was still not satisfied. Rather like someone driving flat out, then banging the brakes on, then flat out again - very wasteful of fuel.
That's fair enough. I waded through this and it supports your findings:
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I guess a 3% or so saving is worth having, particularly if repeated over millions of gas boilers. But then they'll all be disappearing in a few years to be replaced by renewables...
Well, the main point is that my heating doesn't constantly over react on temperature - the house temperature is much more even now than before, due to the more consistent steady heat input.
My house, like millions of others, had a BAxi Bermuda back boiler (about 15Kw) with a 3/6 Kw radiant fire.
The flue was Class 2 flue blocks built into the inner leaf of the cavity wall, which passed through the upstairs front bedroom and kept that North-facing room quite comfortable on its own.
Even the radiator was only half the size of the other, in a south facing bedroom.
If the original numpty builders hadn't chucked the cement snots inside the flue blocks and mortared the joints correctly I might still have it today, but eventually the metal work that directs the gas fire flue into the main flue corrodes and then the fire is condemned even if the boiler works fine.
Oddly enough, a neighbour fell for the BG boiler scam and allwoed them to remove their back boiler and fit a WB condenser in an upstairs bedroom cupboard. They also removed all the flue pipe work that connected to the ridge tile (the class 2 blocks had been replaced with aluminium single skin stuff that had to be boxed in where it passed through the bedroom, many years earlier).
However, despite removed ALL the flues, they left the gas fire and told them they could still use it (even without a flue ??). They are still alive so I guess they only use central heating.
I hear you. But I don't see what anyone can say without any info. You might look to see if parts are available, not excluding ebay where often a whole boiler's worth of parts can be had. If they're available you probably won't need a new one. Other than that we await that 8 hour drive.
Not necessarily and it isnt always highest efficiency that matters, in some situations getting the house up to the temperature you want as quickly as possible without any overshoot at all is what is needed when changing the house temperature significantly, like when its been off when there is no one in the house and someone has showed up, or when going between overnight and normal temps when someone gets up etc.
And that last is what matters more to most comfort wise.
Not when that produces an overshoot in temperature.
Yes, but that?s a different issue to how intelligent the control is.
Not when you know that the difference between the inside and the outside isnt as great and that it doesn?t need maximum heat to adjust the house temperature in a reasonable time. It may well be better to not use maximum heat when say it is changing from overnight lower temp to normal daytime temp when the occupant who has just got up has a shower as soon as they get up and so wont notice that the house isnt at the daytime temp for a while.
Also when the control has been told to heat the house when the first person has come home from work, it may well make sense to use maximum heat when it has observed that the house takes a long time to get up to temperature when the outside temperature is so low the last time it had to do that, say because the insulation leaves quite a bit to be desired.
By observing what has happened the last time it needed to heat the house in those circumstances.
By knowing how often the thermostat calls for more heat in that situation, basically getting a measure of how well insulated the house is etc.
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