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Need NEW cheap boiler + installation

pinkneonmartini
Posts: 670 Forumite
Ok, basically 6 weeks ago our old Potterton boiler packed in! A mate of my grandad's got it to fire up and had it working for a couple of hours at a time but then it would die, need another replacement part, and we'd have to start the whole thing all over again.
I turned 25 this summer, and the boiler was installed when i was 1, so i think 24 years for anything is brilliant, but it couldn't have come at a worse time
My parents business is slowly going down the pan, and the quotes for a replacement have been anything from £4k (including ripping up all the floor boards in our house to replace the entire system and reroute pipes, to make our new boiler bottom entry, which we have been told by British gas is unnecessary), to £6k for British Gas to do a simply like for like swap. They have told us a Baxi or Glow worm would be suitable to plumb straight into our system, but want £2k for the boiler and nearly another £4k to install it! :eek:
As i've been trying to convert my parents to the MSE way for some time the first thing we did was trawl the web for the suggested boilers and have found that we can get them ourselves for £450 for the Glow Worm, or £550 for the Baxi. The problem is we can't find anyone who just wants the job of fitting them, they want to supply the boiler too and despite us telling them we can get them for a couple of hundred quid, they pull out quotes of nearly a grand????????????
British Gas have been pretty much useless, my parents have paid for the boiler maintenance/cover thing since it was first introduced, but when it died the first time we called them immediately, and they turned up and said "oh it's too old we can't get the parts for this" ..... strange that seeing as my grandad's mate was able to get a sparkling array of brand spanking new parts for it! Granted none of them made a blind bit of difference, but my dad is furious and has worked out that he has paid British Gas nearly £5k over the years for this service to essentially be told to go whistle! :mad:
The matter is made worse by the fact my dad is a classic recession victim! He's lived on credit his whole life, tarting the cards to ensure low rates if not 0%APR, but now because he's just hit the over 55 mark, and is self-employed, nobody will let him transfer a single balance. His credit report is spotless, and thanks to my mini money makeover and some serious snowballing he's reduced his credit card debt from over £50k to £29k since xmas. But the likes of Egg/Mint/Barclaycard have all frozen his limits, and upped the interest to an average of 35%!!!!!! But he's trapped, he can't get a transfer, because no-one is lending! British Gas offered him an installment plan at 30% but when they ran the credit check he came back as an unsuitable prospect :mad:
So we have about £1100 in cash, and could probably scrape a couple of hundred more (i'm planning to donate a couple of hundred as i still live at home and have lost count how many times they've bailed me out). But this has got to cover the boiler AND installation.
It's an open vent system, with a vertical wall mounted top entry Potterton in the kitchen. We have a hot water tank in the loft, and a jacketed one in the airing cupboard. We have so far replaced the pump (with success for 2 hours), the electronic ignition board (with success for 2 hours), the Programmer an E3002 (with success for an hour).
Basically as soon as the bloke got it working, he'd stay for an hour to make sure it didn't die, set off, and by the time he got home it would be dead. And before the queries start he's not a cowboy, he is Corgi registered, and he's that into his stuff he reconditions boilers in his spare time as a hobby :rolleyes: on Monday after he replaced the electric board or the "brains" as he called it, he was that convinced that it was sorted he settled up with my dad and said "if that breaks again in the next month i'll give you your money back". And true to his word when we had him back yesterday to replace the programmer and it didn't work he handed back every penny he'd had, and didn't even charge us for the parts coz he'll use them on another job.
The best we've managed to get so far is either the boiler fires up and radiators all come on full blast but the hot water tank only gets to luke warm and then it dies. Or we get boiling water out the tap and the radiators don't warm up at all. Hence why we replaced various bits and the pump. But last night our chap officially declared it dead, as it's got to the point where our old boiler has all new parts and still won't work, there's just no point feeding more money into it.
What i'm after if anybody out there can help is to get a kosher chap in to do the swap? somewhere to get the boiler which doesn't require driving to Plymouth (we're in Manchester) or any suggestions on alternatives to make the job as sound but as cheap as possible.
If you've read this far, thank you!
I turned 25 this summer, and the boiler was installed when i was 1, so i think 24 years for anything is brilliant, but it couldn't have come at a worse time

My parents business is slowly going down the pan, and the quotes for a replacement have been anything from £4k (including ripping up all the floor boards in our house to replace the entire system and reroute pipes, to make our new boiler bottom entry, which we have been told by British gas is unnecessary), to £6k for British Gas to do a simply like for like swap. They have told us a Baxi or Glow worm would be suitable to plumb straight into our system, but want £2k for the boiler and nearly another £4k to install it! :eek:
As i've been trying to convert my parents to the MSE way for some time the first thing we did was trawl the web for the suggested boilers and have found that we can get them ourselves for £450 for the Glow Worm, or £550 for the Baxi. The problem is we can't find anyone who just wants the job of fitting them, they want to supply the boiler too and despite us telling them we can get them for a couple of hundred quid, they pull out quotes of nearly a grand????????????
British Gas have been pretty much useless, my parents have paid for the boiler maintenance/cover thing since it was first introduced, but when it died the first time we called them immediately, and they turned up and said "oh it's too old we can't get the parts for this" ..... strange that seeing as my grandad's mate was able to get a sparkling array of brand spanking new parts for it! Granted none of them made a blind bit of difference, but my dad is furious and has worked out that he has paid British Gas nearly £5k over the years for this service to essentially be told to go whistle! :mad:
The matter is made worse by the fact my dad is a classic recession victim! He's lived on credit his whole life, tarting the cards to ensure low rates if not 0%APR, but now because he's just hit the over 55 mark, and is self-employed, nobody will let him transfer a single balance. His credit report is spotless, and thanks to my mini money makeover and some serious snowballing he's reduced his credit card debt from over £50k to £29k since xmas. But the likes of Egg/Mint/Barclaycard have all frozen his limits, and upped the interest to an average of 35%!!!!!! But he's trapped, he can't get a transfer, because no-one is lending! British Gas offered him an installment plan at 30% but when they ran the credit check he came back as an unsuitable prospect :mad:
So we have about £1100 in cash, and could probably scrape a couple of hundred more (i'm planning to donate a couple of hundred as i still live at home and have lost count how many times they've bailed me out). But this has got to cover the boiler AND installation.
It's an open vent system, with a vertical wall mounted top entry Potterton in the kitchen. We have a hot water tank in the loft, and a jacketed one in the airing cupboard. We have so far replaced the pump (with success for 2 hours), the electronic ignition board (with success for 2 hours), the Programmer an E3002 (with success for an hour).
Basically as soon as the bloke got it working, he'd stay for an hour to make sure it didn't die, set off, and by the time he got home it would be dead. And before the queries start he's not a cowboy, he is Corgi registered, and he's that into his stuff he reconditions boilers in his spare time as a hobby :rolleyes: on Monday after he replaced the electric board or the "brains" as he called it, he was that convinced that it was sorted he settled up with my dad and said "if that breaks again in the next month i'll give you your money back". And true to his word when we had him back yesterday to replace the programmer and it didn't work he handed back every penny he'd had, and didn't even charge us for the parts coz he'll use them on another job.
The best we've managed to get so far is either the boiler fires up and radiators all come on full blast but the hot water tank only gets to luke warm and then it dies. Or we get boiling water out the tap and the radiators don't warm up at all. Hence why we replaced various bits and the pump. But last night our chap officially declared it dead, as it's got to the point where our old boiler has all new parts and still won't work, there's just no point feeding more money into it.
What i'm after if anybody out there can help is to get a kosher chap in to do the swap? somewhere to get the boiler which doesn't require driving to Plymouth (we're in Manchester) or any suggestions on alternatives to make the job as sound but as cheap as possible.
If you've read this far, thank you!
Debt@LBM1=£4050 1st DFD 27/08/09
Debt @LBM2 =£14,469.97 2nd DFD 14/03/2018 :T

Make £10/day Y1£3.5k Y2£3k Yr3£4k Yr4£1.5k
DFW NERD 1068 :cool: Avios 78,000
DFW NERD 1068 :cool: Avios 78,000

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Comments
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Edit: Sorry, you may wish to ignore my text below. I've now read the remainder of your post and you said the boiler man replaced the electric board. I assume we are probably talking about the same thing. That's a shame it didn't work. Hope it all works out okay anyway.
Original text:
We have a Potterton boiler and although 'only' 12 years old, we had exactly the same problem as you, the boiler just dying, can't relight, then managed to relight it, only for it to go out again at a random point.
We had a Corgi registered boiler guy around 3 years ago who said to us that it is the soldering on the Potterton boards that are poor and so the circuit breaks. I was very sceptical; however after 'googling' it, it appeared that this was true. It cost £200 odd to get the board replaced (although you can do it cheaper by buying it online and replacing it yourself); however I opted for the boiler man to do it. Since that day we've not had a single problem with it.
Although you may not have the same problem with the soldering; it may just be the same fault and thus replacing the board could save you a fair amount of money. Agreed, the boiler will need replacing anyway, perhaps this will buy you some time.
I'd encourage you to google it as well - I'll try to post some links in a bit.0 -
sorry to say but if he is that good an engineer he would of fixed it. As for reconditioning boilers in his spare time i doubt it. Every boiler for domestic use is a condensing boiler now with very few exceptions and have to be reported to building control.
I doubt you can get a new boiler fitted for the money you have in all honesty.
Its not just stick a new boiler on the wall. theres power flushing, electrical work, update of controls, maybe change trvs or update to bring up to current regs, electrical bonding.
Most engineers do not want to work on the system if you supply the boiler and parts due to things sometimes missing and if there is a problem with things you supplied then who puts it right? As you supplied the parts its then up to you the get it fixed.
Sorry proberly not what you want to hear.0 -
no it's fine, we really don't know what we're doing, we're a family of accountants so gas really isn't our thing lol. we're just so stuck at the moment, and the thought of living without hot water and central heating for much longer is driving us all crazy.
We don't understand half of what any of the engineers have said, but it's just puzzling that the cheapest quote we've had is for a full re-fit (like you said) and from a small independent guy who we have no references for, and who nobody locally seems to know, and yet the most expensive quote was from british gas who said they'd leave everything as it is and just swap the actual boiler to a Grade A Glow worm or Baxi..... it's all so confusing
In your opinion if the numbers i put up earlier are fair for the kind of jobs we're being faced with, then there's not really much we can do. But by the time we save up enough to cover it winter will have been and gone :rolleyes:Debt@LBM1=£4050 1st DFD 27/08/09Debt @LBM2 =£14,469.97 2nd DFD 14/03/2018 :T
Make £10/day Y1£3.5k Y2£3k Yr3£4k Yr4£1.5k
DFW NERD 1068 :cool: Avios 78,0000 -
forget british gas way over priced. Shop around local, get referances and i would think for a straight boiler swop and upgrades about £1900 to £2500.0
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bambibashercol wrote: »forget british gas way over priced. Shop around local, get referances and i would think for a straight boiler swop and upgrades about £1900 to £2500.
those numbers are much more appealing!thanks bambi, it's nice to get a straight answer from someone, who knows what they're on about :beer:
So new task folks, i'll start scanning the local papers &yellow pages, but there must be someone on this forum that has used an engineer from Manchester/Cheshire/Lancashire/Merseyside. Any recommendations would be huge help!Debt@LBM1=£4050 1st DFD 27/08/09Debt @LBM2 =£14,469.97 2nd DFD 14/03/2018 :T
Make £10/day Y1£3.5k Y2£3k Yr3£4k Yr4£1.5k
DFW NERD 1068 :cool: Avios 78,0000 -
I know of a company in merseyside that i would not touch with a 10 foot barge pole.
Not going to name them but if you you get a company from liverpool then p.m first.
Your best bet is ask friends and family first, and get a detailed quote then come back for more advice.0 -
pinkneonmartini wrote: »those numbers are much more appealing!
thanks bambi, it's nice to get a straight answer from someone, who knows what they're on about :beer:
So new task folks, i'll start scanning the local papers &yellow pages, but there must be someone on this forum that has used an engineer from Manchester/Cheshire/Lancashire/Merseyside. Any recommendations would be huge help!
I have used this in the past: glow-wormheating.co.uk/products_installer.php - they are all Corgi registered0 -
I found a boiler installer by searching on the glow-wormheating web site.0
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I found a boiler installer by searching on the glow-wormheating web site.
thanks eggle, i've just forwarded the link to my dad, hopefully he'll get it sorted this week!Debt@LBM1=£4050 1st DFD 27/08/09Debt @LBM2 =£14,469.97 2nd DFD 14/03/2018 :T
Make £10/day Y1£3.5k Y2£3k Yr3£4k Yr4£1.5k
DFW NERD 1068 :cool: Avios 78,0000 -
I would still recomend looking at small independent engineers as you normally get better service and value for money.0
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