Warm air Heating - How Efficient??

George_Bray

George_Bray wrote: »

I have warm air heating. The system is almost 30 years old and has never even been serviced, it's so reliable! It works great and I wouldn't want anything else since, as others have pointed out, it heats up a room so quickly. It's also very cheap to run. If I ever build my own home, I would specify warm air heating - I rate it that highly.

As at the start of Winter 2007/2008, my warm air system is still working brilliantly, perhaps as a result of not being serviced (messed around) by any engineer. I hear what you say about risk and horror stories but I've checked the air and surroundings with two types of CO detector and all appears to be well. All the trade will do is try and presuade you to replace these systems because there's about £4000 or more, in it for them.

As for efficiency and running costs NO SYSTEM can be more efficient than my 30 year old warm air system. You can keep condensing boilers. This warm air system is so cheap to run and I don't have to recover £4000 of investment (down the drain) on a new system which really isn't justified. I'd sooner spend £4000 on a world cruise or something.

George_Bray

gasmanmartin wrote: »

And if you want to change your heating system or if your boiler is condemed as no parts available you will probably most likely have to change it for a condensing boiler. Personally i wouldn't leave it until it chucks it in the middle of winter.

I checked the parts prices for all the main components of my J&S warm air system. Even if ALL the main parts needed replacing (so unlikely), it would only cost a few hundred quid (low hundreds too). All the parts are still available and most are electrical so I could replace them, e.g. fan, electronic panel, timer, sensors, thermostat. Then I could get a CORGI engineer to change the gas valve (a very common, readily available part which only costs £39.95+VAT and check that the system works OK. My total bill for replacing almost EVERYTHING would almost certainly be about £500 - £750 including the CORGI engineer's labour fee. Would you charge more than £50 or £75 labour to change a gas valve? If it wasn't for regulations, a child could do it.

Now, this doesn't include the main 'heat exchanger' (sheets of metal) but if I ever found they had cracked, I could consider calling in a welder or getting new sheets/parts of metal made up, again at quite low cost. As for the ducts (all that's left) they should last 100 years or more!

vansboy

Well it all got scrapped a month back!

& we found some documentration, from a couple of years back advising it was past its best.

The previous owners did spend quite a bit on it, but now the salvaged components are being kept in the shed of a neighbor - just in case theirs goes bang!

VB