If I couldn't install test and commission it I wouldn't have bothered in the first place thanks..
Sold and bought and re mortgaged don't remembering a Gas cert coming into it at anytime..
And how long might they last for, a year like a rented property one?.
If you look at the actual legislation:
You will note that the only requirement for someone working on gas appliances not for profit or for an employer etc is that they are competent.
While having passed the relevant exams etc would be one way of demonstrating competence, its not the only way.
(note also the law does not specify a definition of competence)
Most people don't have those anyway - i.e. they get lost etc.
Building regs compliance (in particular the sections on energy efficiency) are separate and distinct from any legislation regarding the gas installation itself. You can self install and submit a building notice if you want.
True, The law requires people carrying on the business of gas fitting to be registered.
Think through the situation where a profession gas fitter who works for a gas safe registered firm, fits his/her own boiler. Would that be legal?
The answer is yes, because even if they are working an a private capacity and hence not covered by their employers registration, they are still competent.
Not what the law actually says - see my link to the legislation in question.
You say it saves you £300 to £400 per year, but our whole years gas consumption is just shy of £400. What boiler did you say you had?
What would give _you_ the most confidence?:
1) Gas fitter says he has checked the gas connection and its ok, or 2) You have calculated the pressure drop allowances for the pipework yourself and specified the required diameters to achieve the required < 1 mBar drop at the boiler. You have tested the existing installation for gas soundness and for main gas valve "let by" prior to installation, and again after completion of work. You have even tested the test nipple on the meter with leak detector after replacing the test screw. You have commissioned the boiler fully in accordance with the makers instructions, and measured the flue gases with your own calibrated equipment. You have checked the gas rate and dynamic pressure drop under a range of boiler loads. You remember and have checked that every required flue retaining screw has been fitted, that the outlet is the required distance from building openings etc.Personally I find 2 reassuring, while 1 needs to be taken on trust and and lots of assumptions made.
Probably also worth reading:
That was written by a (at the time) CORGI registered fitter.
With bills of that level there is little point in changing boiler for gas savings - its unlikely to ever pay pack. At £1400/year for gas the sums are different.
If your boiler fails and is beyond repair, then obviously it makes sense to fit a quality boiler of the best available efficiency if you plan to carry on living there. I can't see any logic in trying to fit a non condenser in those circumstances.
Fair points.....and you sound like you know your stuff.
can you, legally, buy a non-condensing boiler these days?
Indeed, an interesting and sensibly written webpage.
Originally (i.e. it came with the house) it was an Ideal Mexico RS80 (efficiency at worst probably about 65% according to SEDBUK, possibly as good as 80% some of the time with some of the model variations). Conventional balanced flue floor stander. The system controls were also relatively crude - digital timer that lost its settings with every power cut, and a traditional honeywell rotary stat. TRVs on some rads but not all (about 20 rads in total). Hot water was a conventional gravity fed system heated by the boiler using a fully pumped S plan system. The cylinder was again also fairly normal one with a relatively low rate of transfer coil (probably about 5kW).
Gas costs were typically in the £1200 to £1500 / year (heating and hot water only - cooking is electric) - and that was getting on for 8 years ago. After the shock of the first years costs, I managed to tweak things a bit better with a prog stat, some balancing and making more use of the open fire etc. However no amount of fiddling round the edges were going to fix the main problems, which were:
The hot water system was feeble - being a converted bungalow with rooms in the original roof space, there was insufficient head of water to make a gravity system work well. Lift the shower head on the bath upstairs to
4' and the water stopped flowing! A bath took half an hour to run.Reheat times were slow, and capacity limited.
The heating was just about ok, but fairly crude at maintaining a stable temperature and some areas were difficult to get warm enough. It was also heavily affected by changing weather conditions (exposed location)
I did consider just revamping the hot water system and keeping the boiler, while also improving the controls etc, but while just about doable, its a pain to convert a mexico to sealed system operation, plus it was already getting on a bit old at that time. Instinct also suggested that there was enough "low hanging fruit" in the energy saving department that one should be able to make at least the boiler pay for itself in time even if not the rest of it. (not to mention I did not really fancy the upheaval of having all the plumbing about twice)
Se we scrapped the existing hot water system and fitted a 210L unvented unistor. Split the heating into two zones (the upstairs is both better insulated and a smaller floor space than the downstairs - so they have different heating needs). Added weather compensating controls with an external temperature sensor. Upgrade all rads (bar those in the hall) to have TRVs if they did not already. Finally played musical rads - increasing output in those places that were hard to heat in the past.
The boiler needed to be capable of using weather compensation and also operating split temperature so that it can run at 75 deg output for water heating, but then follow a heating curve when slaved to the external temperature. In the end I went for a Vaillant Ecotec 624HE, with their own "s-bus" controls for the upstairs and downstairs stats / programmers.
The results have been very pleasing. A much more comfortable all round temperature. A bath you can fill quickly and a shower that can hose your skin off it that's what you want. Adequate water to cope with showers in sequence etc, and space back in our ensuite where I can build another shower later (used to house the cold water and heating header tanks). The gas usage is down, and the gas bill is also down a little bit in spite of all the price rises.
Yes, and you can legally fit them as well in certain restricted circumstances.
You need to go through an assessment procedure to work out if its acceptable to fit a non condenser:
A tendency to confirmation bias, coupled with a low attention to detail perhaps?
There's not a large difference in the efficiency between modern boilers. But there is a big difference in house sizes, how well they are insulated, and hot water consumption. And so on.
Also worth noting I was moving several generations of boiler rather than just a single step.
Agreed.
Your admission of error and apology are accepted.
I'd rather trust myself than a registered fitter... I might be more inclined to trust a fitter if they showed in converstaion during the site visit they understood the pipe sizing requirements, static and dynamic pressure drop requirements, etc and for my installation produced the calculations.
Of the gas explosions in recent years I think only one was down to poor DIY all the rest where down to "registered fitters".
It's certainly opened my eyes to the laws.
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