Wondering about condensing boilers.

JustAnotherSaver

Here's where we're at:

We're looking for our first home & we're interested in this one. In a very sought after area & they don't come up too often.

Down side of this is the EPC which you can see here.

Now the house appears to have no modern heating system & just has electric fan heaters in the bathroom.

We were interested in another house which had a very good EPC rating & one of the suggestions was to replace the boiler for a "condensing boiler". So i did a bit of googling.

What i found was an article basically panning them IMO. Here it is.

Is this article biased or accurate? From reading it, it seems there is little (no) choice anyway, but it mentions that they break easily due to their design vs combi boilers & as they're not as long lasting, they're not very good.

Are they really as bad as this article makes out? Our boiler at home was installed before 2005 & has been fine. Wouldn't want to be replacing this sort of thing every few years!!

TDPIX

Condensing boiler is just a description of how the boiler works, i.e. it 'recycles' some of the heat and thus is more efficient.

You then have different types of boilers, such as combi boilers, system boilers, etc.

They aren't mutually exclusive, i.e. you have condensing combi boilers, condensing system boilers etc.

Anywhoo, our condensing combi is fine. We have no issues with it at all. The article does seem a tad hyperbolic.

JustAnotherSaver

Thanks for the reply.

Another question - on the EPC it states a recommendation of insulating the hot water cylinder with 80mm jacket.

Am i right in thinking if you put in a central heating system then this would make this redundant?

I remember as a kid in our house there was a whopping tank in our bathroom which i think my parents called an emersion (sp?) heater. When our radiators & such were fitted a few years ago, this tank was done away with. I do remember it having a big thick red insulated coat on.

Leif

Are those electric storage heaters?

You could always work out the cost of installing new radiators and a suitable boiler, and then work out what you think the house is worth, then make an offer. After all, the sale price should be based on the state of the house, sort of.

I too would be interested to know the truth behind the boiler article you link to.

Ectophile

You'd have to look long and hard to find a new boiler that wasn't condensing these days. They had a terrible reputation in the early days, but have now been around a while, so a good quality one shouldn't be a problem.

As TDPIX says, "condensing" is just a method of extracting more heat from the burning gases. It's got nothing to do with whether or not it's a combi boiler.

Leif

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Another question - on the EPC it states a recommendation of insulating the hot water cylinder with 80mm jacket.

Am i right in thinking if you put in a central heating system then this would make this redundant?

I remember as a kid in our house there was a whopping tank in our bathroom which i think my parents called an emersion (sp?) heater. When our radiators & such were fitted a few years ago, this tank was done away with. I do remember it having a big thick red insulated coat on.

Not necessarily. If you get a combi, then it heats water when you need it, rather than saving water in an insulated tank. The advantage is less energy wasted maintaining a large tank of hot water. But combis have a downside, since there is a limit to how much hot water they can supply at any given time, hence they are not always suitable. A non combi stores water in the tank.

JustAnotherSaver

Thanks for the feedback.

This presents us a bit of a dilemma. Take the heating out of the equation & the house is bob on & we'd go for it. £150k is really our top end though & for that we'd like to walk into a house with little to do, not with many thousands still to spend on sorting the heating out.

Unfortunately, we can't just take the heating out of the equation as it's not so simple.

southcoastrgi

avg life of a boiler is 10-15 yrs not 3-4 yrs providing it's a decent one in the first place
you can easily solve the condensate pipe from freezing by using trace heating or the new WB box thing, or the simpliest way is to pipe it inside to a drain & not take it outside at all