Warmfront will pay for Mum new boiler but.....

kevinyork

After many months Warmfront have sent someone to look at my Mums boiler and agreed its on its last legs. They have now sent a quote to replace it with a Combi and move it from the Garage to her box room inside what was the old airing cupboard.

Sounded too good to be true...it is. They want her to pay £450 to make up the difference between the cost of the works and the warm front grant...money she does not have and money which the council say they cannot help with either.

Can anyone assist in how to proceed. The quote is something like £3200 which seem a lot.

Any help gratefully received.

Kev

tandeh

ripp off deifinately, let's see boiler £600 -£1000 max,

engineer's fee £500 max, something very wrong there. they will be raking it in, that's the reason for £450 sweetner. the grant people are not stupid they have a grant cieling where they know it should cover everything.

dori2o

£3200 for a boiler replacement, not a bad price.

Around the same as our kid charges, and he's a plumbing and heating engineer.

It all depends on what boiler they are fitting, some can cost upto £1500.

Plus, if OP's mother is going from a conventional system to a condensing combi, then there isother work to be done. It's not just take one boiler out and put new one in. There are other costs, pipe, fittings, timer, electrics plus they guy who fits the boiler is a highly skilled person (whether employed by a company or self employed), who has to pay for registering the installation, plus other expenses such as fuel, insurance (both car and liability), certification, plus the cost of gaining and keeping the required skills needed to do the job.

For £450, you get a brand new boiler, that will possibly save that amount in a year or 2, it's not a bad deal really. Try getting it done for that with a private firm/heating engineer.

If your not sure, ask Warmfront what boiler they will be fitting and get a private quote. I think you will find it's not far off their figure..

kevinyork

Thanks.

I had a look at this site http://www.whatprice.co.uk/heating.html which suggests a price of about £3k for new boiler, radiators and pipework in a 3 bed house.

They are not replacing any radiators in my mums house. They are replacing an old boiler in her garage with a combi to be put in the airing cupboard where her current hot water tank is and they are fitting a new timer and thermostat. Just seems a tad pricey to me.

Its leaving us in an awkward position. Her boiler at the moment is on its last legs but when we approached Warmfront we never expected that she would have to pay something towards the work being carried out. OK, if they were installing a system from scratch then maybe but this is a changeover of a boiler.

tripled

Surely moving it would require extra work, so it isn't just a changeover? I don't know if it is a good price you have been offered, I don't have any experience in this area, but it does look as though you're over-simplifying the work a bit?

aiminghigh

I had my old boiler replaced about 6 months ago with a combi boiler and 9 new radiators with thermostat controls for £2,100. But I do live in Lancashire where prices are cheaper than the south.

The plumber was fast and effecient - took 2 days and I absolutely love my new system.
The house can be warm in 10 mins instead of 90 mins, and I have an unlimited amount of hot water when I need it.

My gas bill is £147 in credit - not bad for a 4 bedroom bungalow with me at home all day and only paying £50 a month to my utility company.

I would highly recommend your mum having the boiler replaced but maybe get some more quotations. For that price she should have new radiators included.

chris

dc

dori2o wrote: »

£3200 for a boiler replacement, not a bad price.

Around the same as our kid charges, and he's a plumbing and heating engineer.

Sorry but that is the most you should pay for a complete system. As has been stated boilers generally cost between £500 and £1200. Catalogue prices can seem high but there are very big discounts available at the merchants.
Replacement is not as complicated as you suggest, as most boilers now come with timer built in, just needing a 13A plug on the leccy side and a feed from a room stat. The hot water may require a moderate amount of work, especially if a straight replacement. That is why they want to put it in the old airing cupboard as it will mean less work for them, and thus even more profit.

Kevin get other quotes, and a quote for putting the boiler where the old one is.

Fitters tend to fit the boiler they have been trained on and thus are blind to other makes and prices.

mum2one

I would go back to warm front and explain to them , the idea of the warm front grant is to replace wants needed, the grants based on covering costs.
We never recieved any quotes it was all done for us.

we went from a back bolier (back of the fire)to a combi bolier, which is now upstairs in the wardrobe, we had 2 raidiators replaced at the same time, the boiler, work, and raidatiors think we were left with about £45 of the grant.

we were told by British gas when they come to do a safety check that we had got a top of the range boiler.

Def go back to warm front direct before you sign and agree to anything.

mum2one

Our house is a 3 bed semi detached house, and did need a lot of pipeing etc,that was 15 mths ago, but the price shouldnt of gone up that much.

minap

I would definitely make sure where all the piping is going because the people who did my parents put all the pipework along the walls and it looks digusting like a proper boiler room in the 3rd bedroom, also the drainage pipe was put in the Cellar very strange.

Another point you should make sure that is warmfront who come to inspect the work as we found out at a later stage that they hadn't even come to inspect the completed work. Hope this helps we are still trying to get Warmfront to do the job correctly.

Good Luck!!!

kizzykizzywizzy

hi I had cavity wall insulation draft proofing of doors loft insulation & a condenser boiler (vailant) installed using a warm front grant & didn't pay anything at all. Replaced a very small amount of pipework & boiler in the same place, but I do think as it's a grant, you seem to be paying a lot towards it. As said by others give them a ring. Good luck