New home, new gas

eneville

Hi All,

We've got a short window to move into a new home, which currently doesn't have any gas supply. We like our showers in the morning so we've opted to avoid using the immersion heater for this.

What would be a better choice for boiler, combi or conventional? I think British Gas quoted about £200 extra for the combi boiler.

Aside from the saving of space with a combi boiler, is there any long-term economical benefit for choosing one of these? If so, is there a break-even point where a conventional boiler does the job better, such as using a LOT of hot water.

Thanks for any opinions or information

Cardew

The advantage of a conventional boiler(with Hot water tank) is a plentiful supply of hot water.

A combi simply cannot provide lots of hot water, particularly in winter.

Obviously there is a heat loss from the HW tank, but on modern well insulated tanks this is about 2kWh in 24 hours with the water at 65C. In practice this is probably closer to 1kWh per day(say 3p)

In any case that heat is not lost for most of the year as it heats the fabric of the house - which is why most HW tanks are in an airing cupboard.

There have been many debates on the pros and cons of each system - having experience of each system, I am firmly in the conventional boiler camp.

macman

'You say that ' we like our showers' How many showers in your new house? Using a combi you can forget about running two simultaneously.
And remember that while a combi is producing hot water, your CH is off.

eneville

Thanks for your reply,

Cardew wrote: »

There have been many debates on the pros and cons of each system - having experience of each system, I am firmly in the conventional boiler camp.

What experience is it that dissuades you from the combi boiler systems?

Cardew

eneville wrote: »

Thanks for your reply,



What experience is it that dissuades you from the combi boiler systems?

Not sufficient Hot Water! Particularly in winter when the input temperature of mains water is low.

Plus my wife would not want to be without her airing cupboard!!