Can anyone recommend a reliable gas boiler?

Pincher

There are plenty of honest, decent engineers around.


The only problem is, they are so busy with loyal customers who rely on them, that they won't even take on new customers, so you never meet them.


So, the ones who turn up quick when you call are quite likely to be professional hookers who's in it for the money.


Also, you could have been sold as a lead without knowing it. You call a number from the local paper, Thomson's directory or yellow pages, and the local number is actually a national agency with a call centre that gets diverted calls. The agency then farms out the job to a real engineer, who sometimes has to pay through the nose for the job.


The worst case scenario for the engineer is, he supplies all the parts, does the job, and the middle man takes the £4,000 from the customer, and scarpers. The registration for the installation says the engineer is responsible, and the customer blames and sues the engineer for any problems.


The only way out is to find a good engineer, and keep him happy. If my guy retires, it's going to be like starting to date again after 20 years of blissful marriage, and trawling through the weirdos, hoping against hope to find a decent guy.

I_have_spoken

No, they're all manufactured from Chinese steel made of cheese and use electronics which are designed to fail five-minutes after the guarantee runs out.

Before Lardy Prescott took his backhanders, you could have got a cast-iron open-flue boiler that would last for 25- years easy.

Andy_WSM

I_have_spoken wrote: »

No, they're all manufactured from Chinese steel made of cheese and use electronics which are designed to fail five-minutes after the guarantee runs out.

Before Lardy Prescott took his backhanders, you could have got a cast-iron open-flue boiler that would last for 25- years easy.

I don't think this is too far from the truth.

I do wonder too if the "efficiency gains" are swallowed up by the manufacturing process and the shorter life of these newer boilers, overall doing more harm to the environment than having a slightly inefficient boiler which lasted forever.

I'm on my 3rd boiler in 9 years, if I include the back boiler that was working, but deemed inefficient so I was fooled into having it replaced with a combi, which has itself been replaced as after just 5 years the combi was deemed too expensive to repair due to electronics failures caused by an internal water leak. I've now got a Glowworm boiler, which is 2 years old and been repaired twice already :-/

edit - I've also had an air to water heat pump installed and removed in that time. Another modern day disaster. Long story short, the company that manufactured it went bust, the unit wouldn't work in cold weather.

Pincher

Glowworm has a short hose that leaks after a few years,
and I got a low pressure error code.
It's a major hassle to get another hose from Glowworm.

My guy just tightened the Jubilee clip, job done.
Like I said, it's the man, not the boiler.

Andy_WSM

Pincher wrote: »

Like I said, it's the man, not the boiler.

Well not really. If these boilers didn't have these silly faults then we wouldn't need a man to come fix them.

Pincher

Andy_WSM wrote: »

Well not really. If these boilers didn't have these silly faults then we wouldn't need a man to come fix them.

Everything breaks down, without due care and attention from somebody who knows and cares.

Andy_WSM

Pincher wrote: »

Everything breaks down, without due care and attention from somebody who knows and cares.

I don't disagree with that at all, but there is no doubt that modern boilers break down far more often than ye-olde fashioned, fossil fuel hogging back boilers. It's almost a given that when you stuff something full of electronics it's going to be problematic!

Pincher

Andy_WSM wrote: »

I don't disagree with that at all, but there is no doubt that modern boilers break down far more often than ye-olde fashioned, fossil fuel hogging back boilers. It's almost a given that when you stuff something full of electronics it's going to be problematic!

Things are definitely getting over-complicated.

I just know that the Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile for Washington DC, and it's going to drop on Islington because they used a diverter valve from a Ferroli combi.