My New Boiler - Is It Legal?

Get in touch with corgi as a first step. Do you have his name and number? If so give that. You could have had a boiler which consumes far less gas than what you have.

If noone actually finds out then who is going to know. If you simply must have an excuse how about 'it was installed in March', or 'the boiler was purchased on March 30th and the job started on that day etc etc', or 'non-compliant? I didn't know, it was chosen by the fitter and he didn't say it was non-compliant'. You know the boiler police are going to knock down your door and demand to see if your boiler is compliant any time soon!

:-)

Andy.

If your CORGI engineer didn't fit it, who did?

Christian.

It's my understanding that from next year every home seller will have to provide a "log book" of their home's efficiency as a prerequisite to selling it.

You may find that in that situation your "log book" might have noticeable discrepancies.

Depends on location of boiler etc as to whether you could have legally fitted a non-condensing boiler. There is a points system. Do you live in a flat?. Where does the flue exit?

I paid a central heating engineer to fit the boiler. He isn't CORGI registered, but his mate who did the gas work on the day may well be for all I know. The guy who invoiced me did all the plumbing work, and removed the old water tank from the loft.

That's why I'm concerned...

I live in a terraced house; the boiler is in the kitchen with it's back to the external wall to the garden, which is where the flue exits.

If my installation does go against building regulations, will I be able to claim that it was actually installed a couple of months earlier? How the hell will they know? I have an invoice showing that I paid for the installation, but sod it, I'll happily amend the date on it.

Ask for the Benchmark logbook. Without one of these, you'll need specific building regulations approval from the BCO.

Christian.

You could do that, I would. but you may be covered anyway.

Look at the 2nd page of the link "Where the discharge from the flue is horizontal and the flue terminal position is:

under the roof of a car port

less than 2.5 metres from a facing wall, fence, building, or the property boundary

less than 2.1 metres above the ground and less than 2.5 metres from a car parking space

less than 2.1 metres above the ground and the plume of flue products would:

be directed across a public footway or frequently used private access route; OR be directed across a frequently used area (eg, patio)."

Your flue probably falls into the last category so could not be a condensor. Or add up the points. You start off with 640 for a mid-terrace.

As a first approximation it pretty safe to say non-condensing doesn't apply.

It was poor practice of the installer to fit a boiler without giving you a range of options including the make,type & model of boiler and the amount of 'dead tree abuse' you wanted to do.

I strongly suspect that this boiler is permitted under the grace period. However in this case it's not by intent but by default.

Apparently not, which seems strange as I believe that other energy saving rules, e.g. insulation, are more strigent there.

"In Britain: England and Wales are required to conform with the new regulations from 1 April 2005; Northern Ireland is expected to have to conform from January 2006 whereas in Scotland there are currently no immediate plans to introduce this requirement... "

Farther north, colder, and windier! Some of my neighbours still use back boilers in the living room, and fuel them with self-cut peat. It would be quite a hardship for some of them to have to install expensive new boilers.

Sheila

Not sure which loophole you're referring to. I've seen loads of flats which are in converted victorian London terraced houses. AFAIK because the flues face each other at a distance of only ~2.4M (1.2 each flat) they qualify for a non-condensor. In any event, ordinary combis are still being fitted in large quantites in these lowend properties.

They don't HAVE to install a boiler, but if they do it may have to be high efficency one. They probably don't have gas anyway.

I doubt that there's mains gas available any closer than 75 miles.

Sheila

No problem then :-)