Combi Boiler or not - bathroom expansion

mrjibbles

Hi All

Please excuse our limited knowledge on this , hense why we are asking so thanks in advance for reading

Myself and my girlfriend have a 3 bedroom house, the worcester boiler is in the roof and the immersion tank is in the airing cupboard outside the bathroom

Would it be beneficial to change to a combi boiler so we can have more space in the bathroom by removing the emmersion tank and expanding the wall

or

Are Combi boilers not worth the hasstle for just more space. We would like the additional space but wondering if it is more work and cost than its worth.

Many Thanks

Rob

maman

Can't give a technical answer (although there will be posters who can) but we had a Worcester combi boiler fitted in the summer and we're absolutely delighted with it. Great plus is the instant hot water, which will be a real bonus in summer months, and it's far more efficient than our (very) old one. You will lose your airing cupboard (i.e. no tank of hot water to keep it warm) so if you are used to that for drying etc it's something to consider. You say you'd welcome the extra space but I have friends who've fitted a small radiator into airing cupboard. Hope this helps.

almar_2

We love our new combi and have made so much room taking out the old airing cupboard that we have had a fantastic shower enclosure fitted.

We did have a bit of plastering to do once it was removed but it was well worth it.

jblack_2

Why not just move the cylinder? If there's nothing wrong with your current boiler it would be a false economy to pay out for a new boiler.

HTH, J

inearlygaveup

When or if you have a family, you will seriously miss the airing cupboard.

My experience also shows that we currently waste at least 5 ltrs of clean cold water waiting for the hot water to arrive from the boiler.

I may be old fashioned but so far I have found nothing to beat the benefits a hot water storage tank. It gives you constant heat to air your washing together with constant running hot water.

I personally think Combi boilers were developed simply to save money on the initial installation costs of a heating system (It saves on all the extra pipe work and hot water cylinder needed in the traditional system).

The down side is the amount of water it wastes, this wasn't a problem until water meters and the ever increasing water charges. I would hate to imagine how much clean, paid for water the whole country pours down the drain.

I will probably be installing a cylinder into my system during the summer so we can incorporate solar water heating into our system.

Canucklehead

Good morning: A combi will require sufficient mains flow and pressure otherwise performance will suffer. See more here .

HTH

Canucklehead

mrjibbles

Morning Everyone

Thanks for your replies

Lorna will be interested to read your posts. Interesting to hear a success story of extra space. Would never of thought a combi boiler would waste water as it heats it when its needed, but interesting to hear. Especially as we have just had out water bill in and its highish, we moved to a meter a year ago. The dishwasher gets used alot so cutting that downa bit, just lazyness isnt it.

What did make me wonder last night but didnt put in the post (was late) is that our house is 30 years old so not sure on the condition of the pipes and the radiators are quite old to i think.

Even so, your replies have given some very good informations so thankyou

Rob

Canucklehead

mrjibbles wrote: »

Morning Everyone

Thanks for your replies

Lorna will be interested to read your posts. Interesting to hear a success story of extra space. Would never of thought a combi boiler would waste water as it heats it when its needed, but interesting to hear. Especially as we have just had out water bill in and its highish, we moved to a meter a year ago. The dishwasher gets used alot so cutting that downa bit, just lazyness isnt it.

What did make me wonder last night but didnt put in the post (was late) is that our house is 30 years old so not sure on the condition of the pipes and the radiators are quite old to i think.

Even so, your replies have given some very good informations so thankyou

Rob

Hi...converting from an open vented to a sealed system could expose weaknesses in the pipework (joints) and radiators (pinholes,leaky valves). A good RGI would pressure test the system first possibly using something like this .

HTH

Canucklehead

debbie42

mrjibbles wrote: »

Would never of thought a combi boiler would waste water as it heats it when its needed,

inearlygaveup was, I think, referring to the amount of cold water they need to run from the pipes before the hot water makes it through. Our combi is in the garage, and the water has a fair way to run from the boiler to the kitchen, so, in addition to the cold water stored in the pipes, it takes a while before the boiler kicks in. I've never measured the actual amount wasted, but it's far more than our old system where the hot water tank was very close to the kitchen sink.

It would have been better for us to have the boiler located closer to the kitchen/main bathroom, but this unfortunately wasn't practical.

mrjibbles

ah cheers Debbie, that makes sense

all these things we would of never thought of so good to hear them here

great stuff!!

Rob

debbie42

A few more points to think about: (all based on my experience, not tekky at all. I have a Worcester Bosch 28i)

For combis:
You don't have to worry about using a whole tank of hot water for, say, a bath and then having to wait ages for it to heat up again with a combi.

You only heat up as much water as you need at one time.

You don't have a hot (or cold) tank, so free up space.

The mains shower pressure is brilliant (but see below about bath problem. I can't get my head around the differences here!)

Against combis:
With mine, once the flow has stopped then the boiler switches off and has to kick on again. So, if you're used to, say, turning the tap on and off to rinse stuff, you'll soon end up with cold water. I hated this when we first got it, though work around it now by having a slower flow going into my sink and washing/rinseing while that's going on. My mil still hasn't got used to this though, and pretty much ends up washing in cold water!

You don't have the warmth of a hot tank for an airing cupboard (I don't actually miss mine at all, but have a towel rail instead and my bathroom is much nicer!)

As you don't have any cold water tank, if supply got cut off you wouldn't have any supply at all. (I was told this, but haven't been affected by it yet, thank goodness. Maybe I should keep some bottled water, jic?).

My combi cannot have a digital timer, My old one used to have a boost switch which I found invaluable. Next time I'd make sure it was fully programmable to handle days differently.

A bath takes much longer to fill. I kick mine off around 20 minutes before I want it!

Heat/flow is affected when multiple demand is made on the water. e.g. if you are having a shower and someone flushes the loo (or worse, puts a washing machine load on**) then your flow will go down to a trickle and the heat will be up and down like a yoyo. I make everyone in my house aware on pain of death that they shouldn't use the water when I'm in the shower. They don't always take notice... If there is only two of you this may not be such a big problem.

Water takes precedence over heating. If say, you're running a bath then your radiator water doesn't keep as warm. I've never actually noticed any big side effects from this myself.


After all that, if I was choosing again, I'd probably still go for a combi but I'd up-spec the power (there are 4 of us in my house, 28 would be fine for 2), and programming capabilities. I'd also investigate if any newer models had a bit more tolerance/lag to cope with keeping it hot when switching the hot water off then on again quickly.

Hope that helps.

**edit: fat chance of anyone else other than me in this house doing that, mind you!!!