Which Combi Boiler

[MarkyMark]

The Heat exchanger on my ideal response 120 combi boiler has split/rusted away and I have been quoted £700 + vat for a replacement ! And that's just the part !.

I am therefore currently looking at buying a new one and have found a couple that are at quite a good price,They are a Baisi garde HE plus 32kw M11032sm/e @ £450 and a Ariston microgenus HE 32kw @ £539.Does anyone have any experience of these. From the specs they seem to be similar to my Ideal model or should I be looking at spending more on something else . We also have a villager wood burner in the house which has pipework going from it into the loft ,can this be plumbed into a combi sealed system ?

The house is a 4 bed ,two bathrooms mainly use showers.

Any advice or recommendations gratefully received

Regards Mark

[Jonathan Pearson]

There one on ebay - item no 190038094896 @ £400 all in delivered, but even then its still bl**dy expensive Good luck Jon

[Rob]

Is this a condenser boiler? I ask because my boiler broke down the other month, and the plumber quoted 2500UKP for a replacement - minimum. It's a standard gas combi in a smallish 3 bed/6 rad terraced house.

He was saying the necessity to meet new regs meant that he could not fit a direct replacement and a new condenser boiler would need expensive/complicated placement arrangements.

Bit of a shock - luckily it only needed a washer at the time.

Rob

[John Rumm]

Aside from being a generally crap brand, IIRC these have a bolt on secondary heat exchanger to achive their condensing action. Hence best avoided.

Not seen these - so will leave for others to comment.

I would not have thought so.

Have you read Ed's boiler choice FAQ?

[Rob]

Rob

[MarkyMark]

Hi,

Thanks for all the advice so far,

Even at £400 it still may work out the cheapest option ! I figure a new boiler is going cost me a fair whack for the installation on top of the initial cost of it,quite how much I've no idea guess 300 is maybe ?. I think im going remove the heat exchanger tonight as nothing to lose and see how bad the split is and if it's possible to weld/repair it first and if not then at least I can get one for £400 now.

Will See

Regards Mark

[Dave Plowman (News)]

There are firms around that deal in secondhand spares. An old boiler is worth near zero despite what the makers may charge for spares.

[nige]

try ringing ideal, they sold me an exchanger for the 120 for about £300 for the same reason, seems to be a problem with their exchangers in the response,

nige

[Ed Sirett]

The Ideal Response is one of the very few (only?) boilers with a modern forced premix burner but is not actually a condensing unit. My guess is that this was a design error. The forced burner does not have enough excess air to keep the combustion products dry enough and so condensation occurs in the hextX. Being a combi often means short firing cycles which do nothing to help.

Only yesterday I was working on one of these I managed to get a result by putting leak sealer into the system. In fact I poured it directly into the (drained) heatX via the auto air vent hole. I also had to bake the marinated flame sense electrode to get its resistance to earth over 100M Ohm.

At 700+VAT for the part (which is going to fail in a few years) it tips the balance hard to a new boiler or many bottles of leak sealer.

[MarkyMark]

Thanks a million for that Ed problem solved , Poured 2 lots of fernox f4 leak sealer directly into the heat exchanger via the air vent hole and did the job !

Regards Mark

[Ed Sirett]

I trust that your boiler will hold out better than my customer's one. It failed again and it will be replaced next week with a Vaillant Ecomax+ 831.

[marcusb3495]

why do diy ers go for go for cheap crap boilers

then wonder why they dont last or spares are hard to find and no bugger wants to repair them

you get what you pay for

vaillant,viesmann-germans vokera-italiions baxi/potterton if you must but baxi having pcb problems

[Doctor Drivel]

The FAQ is 20 years out of date.

[Doctor Drivel]

The instructions say run it at 80C, running it at less causes the problems. The design error is in allowing the user to turn the temperature down.