New boiler advice

benjus

Hi all

I live in a 2 bed, 2 bathroom first floor flat. It has a traditional open vented hot water system with a gas boiler. The hot water cylinder appears to be in good shape - it's a modern one with good insulation (not just a bare metal cylinder with some lagging).

The pressure of the showers in the bathrooms is not as good as I would like. Most of the time we only use one bathroom at a time, although sometimes we need to use both showers at the same time.

The boiler is about 15 years old. It's been fine so far, but when I had it serviced a few days ago I was told not to expect more than another year or two of life out of it (there's a bit of rust, some minor damage to the fan, and it's making kettling noises; the gas guy doesn't think it's worth addressing any of these individual issues as the boiler is so old).

Anyway, I've started thinking about options for the replacement boiler when the time comes. Initially he said that he would advise replacing the boiler like-for-like, but later on the phone he said that a combi might be an option depending on mains water pressure (which doesn't seem to be particularly high) and paying more to reconfigure the pipework.

I'd be quite keen to get the additional space from removing the hot water cylinder (I'm not worried about having a backup hot water supply in case the boiler fails). But my main priority is to get better pressure to the showers if at all possible.

Can anyone suggest what options might be available? Would you advice keeping the status quo or switching to combi? Would an unvented system be an option or are these more suitable for larger properties?

Shack_attack

We have the same issue, I'm planning to get a Combi, purely for efficiency and to do away with the tanks and make more space in the bathroom.

If it's literally just pressure you're concerned about in the shower, save yourself a couple of grand and buy a power shower.

This connects to both the cold and hot feeds, much like a mixer but also to the electrics and forces the water out.

You also need to make sure with a Combi that the pressure in the area is substantial

benjus

Shack_attack wrote: »

We have the same issue, I'm planning to get a Combi, purely for efficiency and to do away with the tanks and make more space in the bathroom.

If it's literally just pressure you're concerned about in the shower, save yourself a couple of grand and buy a power shower.

This connects to both the cold and hot feeds, much like a mixer but also to the electrics and forces the water out.

You also need to make sure with a Combi that the pressure in the area is substantial

I guess I could get the same effect as a power shower by installing a pump near the cylinder and keeping the thermostatic shower mixers I already have.

But I'm not sure the tanks have enough capacity to supply enough water when a pump is used.

Johnhowell

We have just added a pump to a mixer shower. It is feed from the hot water cylinder and the storage tank in the loft with changes to pipe work. Brilliant pressure at hand set, noisy pump above. Although if you have room in the airing cupboard, that is the best place for the pump and you could insulate the walls.


I doubt you can feed a pump from a combi-boiler, as it can not supply hot water fast enough, you can not drag water from the mains faster than it supplies. You need large stored capacity of both hot and cold water.


Personally, I would keep the conventional system. Our boiler is 22 years old and is absolutely fine inside. It may not be as quiet or "efficient" as a new one, but works fine. Also, some plumbers may what an easy job - take old one off the wall, place new one on wall - no messing around, fiddling inside a tight cabinet...


Two colleagues at work recently had to replace their boilers due to failures (over 20 years old each). Local plumbers used, one was replaced with a Glow-worm the other, I think, was a Worcester. Some changes to pipework, gas pipe size increased to 22 mm, pump, etc. Both cost just over £1800.



Additionally, the bath tap mixer shower was abysmal - turned out the hose was the incorrect size and was throttling the flow! Put the correct hose size and it flows fine.

Good luck,
John