Heating query

Little_Munsterlander

Hi

I had a very old boiler that needed replacing so I have had this replaced. In addition to this, the existing radiators were not getting the house warm enough so I changed 6 of them and the hot water cylinder was losing a lot of heat into the airing cupboard, so I've changed this to one with factory fitting insulation (decided against a combi owing to the very hard water where I live and other reasons).

Problem one: the hot water cylinder has been replaced by a much smaller one. The old one was 6 and a quarter cubic feet which equates to 177 litres. The new one is 98litres.

Problem two: the house is heating at 1 degree per hour, and the undersized rads have been replaced by all single rads which I don't think give out enough heat. One degree per hour and its not even the dead of winter does not seem quick enough. I did not expect to have to run the heating for hours to get the house warm in the morning.

This whole job has cost me £5.5 thousand pounds and it was done by British Gas and I feel disappointed that I'm left with a house that's just as difficult to heat as before and a much smaller hot water cylinder with a 2 bathroom house.

Please can anyone suggest what can I reasonably demand from them to rectify this?

southcoastrgi

what size was the old cylinder width/height ie 36x18, 36x16 etc
the problem with replacing old unlagged cylinders with new ones is the width of the door or the airing cupboard, for example your door maybe 19" wide if the old cylinder was 18" then it will fit through, if the new cylinder is 18" with the foam lagging this will be 20" so it won't go through the door, so you will have to have a narrower cylinder however to get the same amount of stored water the cylinder will have to be higher than the old one, this of course means pipework to alter & i'm guessing they cut corners & didn't want to do this so you ended up with a smaller cylinder.

you can work out your own heating calc here then compaire the heat outputs you should have with the rad sizes they put in.

most people think they are getting a better service going with BG but unfortunatly they are normally the most expensive & give much worse service than a local RGI

LEJC

How long ago was the work carried out?

Was it the case that when they surveyed the job and prepared the quote which you agreed to you asked for a like for like system or did you request more powerful radiators than you had...

4 years ago we had a new system supplied and fitted by BG who were surprisingly at the time the cheapest and best quote and a lot of time was put in by their surveyor before installation talking to us and finding out what we needed.

You should have a number for customer services and possibly that should be your first point of contact.

When you are asking for advice on how to rectify the situation,is it a situation of your doing or theirs...if they have simply fitted the system you have asked for then its possibly going to be more difficult a situation to resolve.

justjohn

southcoastrgi wrote: »

most people think they are getting a better service going with BG but unfortunatly they are normally the most expensive & give much worse service than a local RGI

i agree its cause they can get away with it lol

Little_Munsterlander

Hi

Thanks for your replies.

When the BG salesman came round I told him that the house wasn't heating up enough and I wanted double rads as I thought they were undersized; I only realised they were singles when they engineer had fitted them to the walls.

Regards the cylinder, I queried the size he'd quoted for but he insisted it would be big enough.

The cylinder is not such a worry because I think the boiler will heat up the water quickly, at least the engineer said it would take 15 mins (Worcester Bosch Greenstar 24ri), but the undersized rads is a problem. The only reason I was having them replaced in the first place was because they were undersized.

I've got the rads up to max and the heating control on the boiler up to max: is a warmup rate of 1 degree per hour unreasonably slow?

Little_Munsterlander

Incidentally its a 4 bed/3 storey victorian terrace; the thermostat is in the hallway where there are 2 rads downstairs and one up on the landing.

Canucklehead

Hi.

What is the make of cylinder? Type? Information can be found on the label on the cylinder (unless it's round the back of the cylinder)

As for the rads only someone who has measured up and calculated the output for them will be able to say how much, if at all, they are undersized. That would be BG.

Any comment here is just guessing.

GSR

Little_Munsterlander

Hi
All the 3 rads in the hallway (where the thermostat is) were supplied by BG and specified by the BG salesman.

The question really is whether their specified boiler and rads delivering 1 degree temperature increase per hour is reasonable a reasonable rate. If I can only get warm after the heating has been on for 4 or 5 hours I'm not sure it is.