Combi boiler for 3 bed/12 radiator semi?

Paris98

Hi

My mum's boiler is old, and she has been thinking of replacing it with a combi (because a few people have said how great they are). Yesterday, it started making terrible banging noises, and she has had to turn it off.

She currently has the boiler in the garage, and the tanks in the loft. Although it is only a three bed semi, she has twelve radiators.

She will obviously get quotes, but any idea of a rough figure to expect? What kind of "intelligent" questions should she be asking the fitter?

Any recommendations for a great corgi fitter in north Birmingham?

Thanks.

lightspeed

Recently had a combi fitted in a 3 bed semi (8 rads). We paid £2200 to have the boiler moved from our kitchen into the loft. We chose a Worcester Bosch 30CDI boiler with a wireless room stat. The boiler is great and ample for our household (the plumber said that the next model down would have been more than enough, but the 30CDI was only an extra £60 in price).

HugoSP

It all depends how you approach these jobs.

We had a combi installed as a replacement to a conventional boiler in our last house. There were installation issues with the CH pipework and with the low pressures that open vented circuits work with (0.3 bar) the water actually kept evaporating/boiling in the pipes giving us lots of air in the system. If you understand heat pump theory you'll know how this can occur.

We got a couple of quotes as I had already sourced a boiler for a property I was renovating, but our own need came first. One was a local plumbing firm that wanted nearly £1k to fit it and the other was BG who quoted about £2800 but wanted to sell us their boiler.

A plumber was recommended to us by a friend. He charged us about £250. The new boiler went in a different place to the old, so i helped him remove the old boiler at the end of the job, though it was the sort of job I could have done on my own. The job entailed removing the hot water tank, isolating the primary circuit of the CH system, and linking up the hot and cold water circuit in the kitchen (nearest spot to the boiler) to the HW and CW outlets respectively. One loft tank was disconnected with the other left in place to feed the WC in case of an interruption to the CW supply.

In addition the CH header tank was removed and its feed and expansion were capped off.

We only had one issue after the installation and it wasn't anything the plumber could have helped. A hot water pipe ruptured on a dodgy join due to the increased pressure (0.3 bar to mains water pressure). This was repaired and the resulting damage (kitchen units etc) formed a successful buildings insurance claim. We put this money towards remodelling the kitchen/dining room areas to a kitchen diner.

There was only one drawback. The bath took longer to fill.

ozskin

combis can be great if specified correctly. How many bathrooms/water sources does she use. If her water demand is not that great then this could be great for her. Just make sure her shower if she has one is compatible with a new combi, potentially this could be dangerous