It's new combi boiler time.

[stephec]

Our seventeen year old Worcester is now starting to leak and need seals replacing so rather than wait until it completely kicks the bucket we're going to replace it now.

My cousin is a gas engineer and he's already been round to give us a quote, he uses Ideal boilers which I've never heard of before although they seem to get good reviews online.

So what does everyone recommend in the 30kw output range please?

 

[Buck]

Is it worth checking the viability and costing (purchase and running) of an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) for your heating?
It might work for you and the savings/benefits over the coming years could be very much worth it. Obviously you’d need to look at water heating separatel.

Ideal have a good reputation. Worth checking the warranty. Usually you can extend this for free as long as it is serviced every year. Our Viessman boiler (not combi) came with 7 years if serviced.

 

[sevenfourate]

I’m the middle of starting to do the same. Current bolier working good - but 22 years old. British Gas just quoted £6.7k for new installed 😳

 

[Sharky]

I can't recommend a boiler, but I could recommend a plumber. A cyclist as well!

If you live in Kent?

 

[bikingdad90]

Would not recommend an ideal boiler.

Our ideal boiler is about 5 years old and pretty much everything had been changed on it over those 5 years, it’s not been very robust despite annual, and in some cases bi annual services. It sometimes throws up silly little faults and goes into “overheat lock out” mode, meaning I have to faff around with pressuring, bleeding, restarting it etc.

Once it comes to the end of its life I will not be going for the brand again.

Alternatives to consider are air source heat pumps and/or PV panels and battery storage. There are a few companies who run a rent a roof type scheme whereby they install the PV and take the feed in tariff for 10years but you can still use some of the electric generation.

 

[bonzobanana]

My mother's just had her boiler replaced it was a Ideal Ishar 24 and has not been a great boiler. It was fitted free of charge for my mother with some sort of grant but the company doing the grant work only fitted Ideal boilers. It's been a bit problematic and less than amazing. The valve that diverts from heating water to heating radiators has been problematic and despite regular greasing etc just wasn't reliable. There were other issues with the boiler like the pump too that was very weak and so in the end better to replace than repair. We provided the replacement boiler and flue and the plumber fitted it for what was to be £450 plus VAT and other required sundry parts but there was a small issue that meant 2 extra hours of work. The end cost was I think £838 including VAT which included about £80 of parts. It was all done in a day. The replacement is working great. Very impressed with the plumber he just got on with it. My brother had a boiler replaced I think that took 3 days and was more like £2k although I may have remembered the details wrongly. I would never use British Gas myself they often give the most ridiculously expensive quotes. Years ago they quoted something like £4500 when everyone else was quoting sub £2500 for a full install. That was many years ago mind you but that quote was so non-competitive that would never ever consider them again. I should add that before the Ideal Ishar boiler my mother had a Bosch Worcester boiler and that wasn't amazing either, had quite a few issues, I don't think it was any better than the Ideal boiler. Both were 24KW boilers but she has quite a small home.

I don't currently have a central heating system in my house but because there is only me and I only need to heat the room I'm in etc I use electric heating. Yes not as cheap in theory but no maintenance charges and no pump etc to circulate water. My house is quite simple though with a single bathroom right next to the kitchen so the gas water boiler is right next to where the water is needed. I pay about £40 a month in electricity and £20 for gas (gas fire in the living room as well as the gas water boiler). I rarely put on heating but have gadgets galore wasting electricity.

 

[Tenkaykev]

Is it worth checking the viability and costing (purchase and running) of an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) for your heating?
It might work for you and the savings/benefits over the coming years could be very much worth it. Obviously you’d need to look at water heating separatel.

Ideal have a good reputation. Worth checking the warranty. Usually you can extend this for free as long as it is serviced every year. Our Viessman boiler (not combi) came with 7 years if serviced.

I think an ASHP also heats the water. ( I have recently been looking into this, by recently I mean over a couple of years).
We have Solar and battery so a Heat Pump makes sense in that I can store overnight cheap rate electricity to use during the day, in the end I decided it is more economical to stick with the existing conventional gas boiler until it packs up ( 20+ years old Glow Worm, still going strong)

 

[presta]

Which rate Worcester, Vaillant, Ideal & Baxi as best buys, with Worcester & Vaillant equal best overall. On reliability alone the best are Worcester Ideal & Viessmann. Worcester scores a bit lower on ease of repair because engineers don't like the way you have to pull them all to bits to get at anything. (Worcester & Vaillant have been coming top for years, others tend to bob up & down the charts.)

My old floor standing non-condensing boiler was an Ideal, and it just ran and ran for 30 odd years with just two replacement thermocouples, the current one is a 7 year old Worcester combi. It's OK, the main grumbles I have are about condensing and computerisation in general rather than Worcester in particular.

 

[si_c]

I think an ASHP also heats the water. ( I have recently been looking into this, by recently I mean over a couple of years).
We have Solar and battery so a Heat Pump makes sense in that I can store overnight cheap rate electricity to use during the day, in the end I decided it is more economical to stick with the existing conventional gas boiler until it packs up ( 20+ years old Glow Worm, still going strong)

ASHP will provide hot water, but not on-demand like a combi will, so you need a hot water tank somewhere, not an issue if you already have an immersion heater in your setup though.

I have an Ideal boiler, rate it very highly, had it a couple of years and it's been faultless. They come with a 10 year warranty provided you service the boiler annually. I did quite a bit of research before opting for the Ideal, they did have a few boilers that had some problems 10-15 years ago, but they've completely revamped them and apparently the newer models are far more reliable. The 10 year warranty does kind of indicate they have some faith in their product.

The other reason I opted for Ideal rather than Worcester or Vaillant was that their boilers support OpenTHERM which means they are able to be controlled by a thermostat with much greater modulation - I've got a Nest Thermostat and it drops the temperature of the loop depending on the outside and inside temperature so that the boiler isn't cycling off/on constantly like an older setup and the radiators often run at 40-50°C rather than full temp which is quite a bit more efficient.

 

[mjr]

I think an ASHP also heats the water. ( I have recently been looking into this, by recently I mean over a couple of years).
We have Solar and battery so a Heat Pump makes sense in that I can store overnight cheap rate electricity to use during the day, in the end I decided it is more economical to stick with the existing conventional gas boiler until it packs up ( 20+ years old Glow Worm, still going strong)

But anyone whose boiler packs up would probably do well to look at ASHP. Fitting a gas boiler now seems rather like buying a diesel car some years ago: you know it doesn't really make sense and it's only bizarre government incentives encouraging it, but they won't last much longer now. Sooner or later, the environmental levies will move onto gas too instead of penalising only electririty use, which will make it much easier for ASHP to compete on price, not just noise and air quality.

ASHPs come in at least two varieties: air-to-water can heat water tanks and radiators and get a Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant; but air-to-air only do warm air heating, don't get grants and are much more efficient.

30kW seems massive and hints at how poor gas combis are. Our ASHP is 8.5kW and keeps our 35-year-old house heated and hot-watered. It replaced an oil smoker of 22kW I think.

 

[presta]

30kW seems massive and hints at how poor gas combis are. Our ASHP is 8.5kW and keeps our 35-year-old house heated and hot-watered. It replaced an oil smoker of 22kW I think.

Instantaneous water heaters need to be higher power than that needed for heating, otherwise you have a poor flow rate when running hot water. As my system used to be, I had a 15kW boiler for the heating and a 22kW multipoint for hot water, now it's a 28kW combi. Even 22kW was a bit on the slow side in mid winter.

 

[albion]

Engineers often tend to use boilers that they get the best deal on. It makes them price competition when the need arises.

My initial thought for a leaky boiler is to spend a score on some Fernox and 'see how it goes'.
Pitfalls am sure but a possible very cheap shortish term solution.

 

[wonderloaf]

We had an Ideal boiler (Vogue Max) installed about 6 years ago which has an annual service every year and so far hasn't thrown up any faults, the engineer says it's still like a new boiler inside. The boiler itself has also worked faultlessly in this time although the same can't be said for the wireless thermostat which is total cr*p, it struggles to regulate the temperature properly so you're always either a little bit too hot or a little bit too cold.

Also the engineer who installed it (not the current one) said it would be more efficient and heat the house up more quickly (it doesn't) and would be a lot quieter (it isn't) than the 15+ year old one it replaced. As you can guess i wouldn't be recommending them to anyone.

 

[Drago]

Or an electric combi boiler, just to confuse the choices.

 

[Goldenretriever]

By coincidence, sons boiler packed up last night. when he called I started to panic. His partner is due next Sunday and I'm due to go down and help. They live near Thame, I renovated his first house down there, the trouble he's had today finding a plumber who would even answer the phone or emails. Waiting on a quote from the only one who was interested, new boiler apparently. At least he's recommended Worcester, that's what we've always fitted. Hopefully there will be hot water for grandad next weekend!