We had similar in house built in the 1930s. But also had an external storage cylinder, fed from the back boiler and with an immersion heater. You'd not want a roaring fire in the living room just for hot water in the summer. Even in the North of Scotland.
There are still Baxi Bermuda gas back boilers with the radiant fire fixed to the front. One neighbour close by still uses his. That has 28mm gravity feed to the hot tank and 22mm pumped rads, with 4 tapped cores in the side of the Hx. House was built 1976
In a 'modern' house, like the huge numbers built in the 70's, these were standard fitment for many. The flues were class 2 flue blocks that were part of the inner block wall, and typically went up through the bedroom above, and then inside the loft, a 45 degree exit block connected to the ridge vent tile with asbestos/cement pipe.
The heat emitting from the flue blocks in the bedroom allowed the builders to fit a rad only half the size of the one in the back double bedroom (similar room size).
With DG and cavity wall insulation, the only significant waste of heat was that which escaped from the ridge vent (and the local rook colony soon learned how to keep warm in winter), so they may not have been as 'inefficient' as they are made out to be.
The downside was that with full C/H on, the hot tank got up to
80C which was dangerous to some people, but the excess heat was still not lost to the outside.
The houses on this estate were built in 1973 with gas backboilers, mine was replaced by a cast-iron boiler before I bought it. Several neighbours have fitted a condensing combi, and had to replace tem already, my lump soldiers on ...
approx 11,000 kWh/year of gas, which covers heating and hot water of a 3 bed semi, at 2.7p/kWh that's £311/year ... where's the sense in replacing it?
On the back of that programmer there is a switch that allows you to choose between gravity or fully pumped.
What this switch did was link the HW and CH sliders. So if both were off and you moved CH to timed or ON it also moved the HW slider across to timed or ON.
However moving the CH from ON to OFF left the HW slider where it was but moving the HW from ON to OFF also turned off the CH.
Yes they would have needed to put a pump in for the HW.
And not much use in summer.
This one suffered from being under a British Gas service plan, and hence lots of sucking of teeth and 'ye cannae get the parts anymore', and eventually they refused to cover it.
I don't know if you can actually get the parts these days, or whether they're sufficiently pattern that you can find or fashion suitable replacements.
I'm guessing you don't have the gravity hot water as described, though? It sounds like that was a good reason to fit zone valves and controls on the hot water, even if you kept the boiler.
Theo
I've had to replace the thermocouple, obviously they're generic sostill available, I think I have a spare somewhere, It has no electronics, if the coil on the gas valve goes that might be curtains for it?
I do.
it's sleeping dogs now ...
Because old boiler are regularly decommissioned, I've never had an issue with finding parts on eBay.
Maybe, but converting the rest of the system to take a heat only boiler would make the fitting of a new boiler simpler.
I don't think a registered gas installer is allowed to replace a boiler without bringing heating controls up to date at the same time.
Our Village Hall boiler failed and the BG fitter hasd the usual "can't get the parts". Using Yellow Pages (this was a few years ago) I found an independant 'gas man'. He looked used his mobile "George have you got and XX for a YY boiler?" "OK, I'll pick it up later today". We got another 5 years' life out of the boiler and never went near BG again. Currently we have a service contract with the boiler manufacturer.
I'm hoping that will become SEP.
Presumably thentank stat controls the boiler when there's no central heating demand - which is better than the default gravity system with no tank stat.
Have you considered installing a motorised valve in the HW circuit in order to convert your system to a C-Plan?
yes, that's right.
Not especially.
It would provide a boiler interlock - turning the boiler off when both demands are satisfied.That should save you some gas. It would also prevent the hot water from overheating when the central heating is on.
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