Boiler packed up.

fedupwiththeworry

fedupwiththeworry wrote: »

So 2 kw oil filled with thermostat the best choice ?

Any views please need to go out and get something tomorrow, very cold in the house.

dander

Argh! I just posted a huge long answer, but I lost it.

This is not what you want to hear, but you will find heating your house with portable electric heating is incredibly expensive.

As an example - I spent last winter without central heating. I managed to keep my fuel bills down to only a little more than when I was running central heating. I only managed to do this by keeping the house far, far colder than most people would be happy with. I didn't feel I could have guests because the house was so cold. I live alone, so was only heating one bedroom. I would often wear a hat indoors to keep myself warm and plenty of thick knitwear. I kept a blanket on the sofa.

I mostly had oil-filled radiators, I found the flat-panelled kind to be more effective than the chunky style. I used a timer switch on the bedroom and only really heated it for a short while in the mornings. I used an electric blanket on the bed and would often head up to bed very early and watch telly or whatever from the bed, because that was the best way to keep warm. I was often only keeping the house at about 12 degrees. When you think that living like this was costing me as much as running a full (old and inefficient!) central heating system used to, you can get a picture of just how expensive this can be.

If you've got a family, you will need to heat larger areas of your house to higher temperatures than I did so it will increase your bills enormously. By the time you've bought the heaters and then paid much higher bills, I really think you might be better spending that money on fixing the boiler.

fedupwiththeworry

dander wrote: »

Argh! I just posted a huge long answer, but I lost it.

This is not what you want to hear, but you will find heating your house with portable electric heating is incredibly expensive.

As an example - I spent last winter without central heating. I managed to keep my fuel bills down to only a little more than when I was running central heating. I only managed to do this by keeping the house far, far colder than most people would be happy with. I didn't feel I could have guests because the house was so cold. I live alone, so was only heating one bedroom. I would often wear a hat indoors to keep myself warm and plenty of thick knitwear. I kept a blanket on the sofa.

I mostly had oil-filled radiators, I found the flat-panelled kind to be more effective than the chunky style. I used a timer switch on the bedroom and only really heated it for a short while in the mornings. I used an electric blanket on the bed and would often head up to bed very early and watch telly or whatever from the bed, because that was the best way to keep warm. I was often only keeping the house at about 12 degrees. When you think that living like this was costing me as much as running a full (old and inefficient!) central heating system used to, you can get a picture of just how expensive this can be.

If you've got a family, you will need to heat larger areas of your house to higher temperatures than I did so it will increase your bills enormously. By the time you've bought the heaters and then paid much higher bills, I really think you might be better spending that money on fixing the boiler.

Hi,

Many thx for your reply (sorry the original got lost, has happened to me before :mad: )

I totally get what you are saying, however I haven't got the money to fix the old or get a new boiler but can get 2/3 electric one's from what prices I've seen online. I can see now that over time this will cost more but I don't seem to have much choice.

dander

On the plus side, if you've only got two or three heaters, you won't build up the bills too much. But on the other hand, you won't get the house very hot at all with that few.

dander

Thinking about your situation, I personally think you might be best off buying 1 oil-filled for your main living room and a few small basic fan heaters. Fan heaters are more expensive to run, but they give a quick blast of heat whereas the oil-filled take quite a while to warm a room. With the fan-heaters you could quickly put them on while you/the kids get dressed for instance then switch off when you leave the room.

espresso

fedupwiththeworry wrote: »

Halstead best 60. We had no cover so signed up to the BG deal to fix it £90.00 odd up front and a monthly fee for future cover.

The guy came out last Fri and it needed a new fan (one of the wires had snapped off) and also either the aquastat or pcb ignition.

They were supposed to come yesterday but couldn't get the fan until today, anyhow when he turned up the fan was wrong and he said they would have probs getting one because the boiler is an old model.

He replaced the other 2 bits and did some tests and said that even if he had the fan it still wouldn't work.

He said the cover didn't apply to so many faults and it would be cheaper to get a new boiler. He cancelled the policy.

So this BG 'engineer' replaced two parts and then gave up because he had brought the wrong fan and that was all he/she was prepared to do for the £90.

I still think that if you could find a real engineer, the fan with the broken wire could most likely be mended and you could forget the electric heaters and the added expense of using them.

capita_guy

fedupwiththeworry wrote: »

Hi,

Many thx for your reply (sorry the original got lost, has happened to me before :mad: )

I totally get what you are saying, however I haven't got the money to fix the old or get a new boiler but can get 2/3 electric one's from what prices I've seen online. I can see now that over time this will cost more but I don't seem to have much choice.

Where in the country are you? It sounds like all the people who have looked at your boiler are only changing parts, not diagnosing the problem.
Do you get any bebefits to qualify for grants?

bryanb

dander wrote: »

Thinking about your situation, I personally think you might be best off buying 1 oil-filled for your main living room and a few small basic fan heaters. Fan heaters are more expensive to run,

Not really 1kw via a fan heater gives exactly the same output as 1kw via oil filled and costs exactly the same.

dander

bryanb wrote: »

Not really 1kw via a fan heater gives exactly the same output as 1kw via oil filled and costs exactly the same.

The difference is though, that the oil-filled don't run at full power all the time. They run to maintain themselves at a certain temperature and they will use up to 1kw of energy to maintain that temperature, whereas the 1kw fan heater will chuck all its power out all the time.

macman

I suggest you post the make and model of the boiler, then one of the CH gurus on here should be able to advise if the fans are available or not. I would certainly not accept the opinion of BG on this without further simple research.