Our electric bills at work were sky high last year with electric heaters plugged in around the place, and we've no hot water without boiling kettles so...
Which boiler would you buy? Something 20odd KW, no bells and whistles.
How long do you expect to be there?
If the answer is less than 5 years, then go for whatever is cheap / on offer. For something longer term, then one of the more recognisable brands like WB, Vaillant etc. Unless you are fitting it yourself, it might just come down to whatever the proffered offering of the installer it.
I'll fit it and should the need arise fix it myself.
Are the better brands worth it in this scenario? I don't want something breaking down all the time but don't need it bombproof.
I might be pushing luck but I've had nearly 25 years out of 2 sub £500 boilers at home without too much bother. (A Savio and a Biasi Riva)
I have a *young* Potterton precision boiler, done about 3 years work now sat on a pallet, looking for a home.
Yours for fetching (Herts.) plus filter and new flue.
Vaillant & Worcester Bosch are the only relatively reliable ones. I wouldn't fit anything else. A second hand one might be worth considering.
For curiosity's sake only, there are Chinese boilers that cost under £100. From what I can tell they appear to be flueless, judging by the caution not to use them too long or they'll kill you. I'm not recommending one :)
25 year old boilers are a very different design to new ones. No new one is likely to last that well.NT
The Which? survey of just the odd 10,000 owners of boilers found Viessmann the most reliable brand.
But they found availability of parts less good than WB. OTOH, they found Viessman easier to repair common faults .....
Sadly you'd be about an 8 hour round trip and i'm not sure I could fit that in in the near future.
But cheers.
I wasn't looking for a short term fix since I've no intention of moving house.
So went for a Viessmann. Self install - replacing a BF BE Potterton which was about 25 years old. The old boiler still working OK, but a good time to update when doing other works. It's a medium sized Victorian house, so fairly high heating costs. Which means a more efficient boiler might recover its cost sooner than in more modern houses.
I got a much better deal on the boiler via Ebay than from my local Viessmann dealer. About 25% cheaper, and free delivery.
The Viessmann help line was very good for any queries I had with my self install, and with setting up the software for the weather compensation I opted for. (New versions should be easier)
Only had the one problem with it - after about 10 years use. There is a rubber hose between the heat exchanger and copper pipe which failed. Subsequent leak took out the gas valve electrics. And blew a fuse on the PCB - a solder job to replace. The hose appeared to be silicone rubber, so likely not a common failure. Such hoses on car rads can do the life of the car.
Interestingly, the supplied manual didn't show this hose. The copper pipe going direct to the heat exchanger in that. I'd guess it was added to further improve NVH. It is a pretty quiet device.
I used a postal spares service for my Viessmann. Every single part seemed to be in stock. Next day delivery.
One nice point about the design was the PCB included soldered in fuses for every single output etc from it. Meaning it less likely to get damaged beyond economic repair with a fault elsewhere.
I do realise that's not going to help most who just get a man in to fix things. Most plumbers wouldn't know where to start with fixing a PCB. And a new one costs and arm and a leg.
OK. Worth a try. It was a BG installed replacement for the cottage and then too small for the expected load when we extended.
Not many d-i-y folk willing to do a gas boiler install.
There are pallet collection services that will go pickup stuff like that for you...
I did one in 1988, boiler still going strong.
I'm game. Without an exact from/to address the first one I looked refused to quote. Somewhere between 25 and 100ukp.
£50 is typical for not too much on the pallet.
NT
Did both of mine. It's only plumbing, after all. And some wiring.
If the latest one was a condenser, how did you check the flue gases ?.
People said that about Biasi combis, which B&Q used to sell 20 years ago, but I keep hearing stories of ones lasting 25 years.
It does it automatically. Flu gas analyser. Don't most these days?
But it's hardly expensive to have it checked after installation.
The pump will be seized?
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