Replacing our 28 year old boiler help?

lisa110rry

I'm smiling at the thought of Phil's parents being "an old couple" in their 60s and early 70s!:rotfl:

For purposes of completeness, we replaced our old Vaillant with a new Vaillant Ecotek in June with Hive to manage our heating. It's brilliant. Our energy supplier, So Energy, shows a bar chart of expected consumption month on month and I did a screen shot of it in November so I can calculate saving over estimated, which I have done this morning using my monthly readings. Between 13/11 and 13/12/2016 we used 30% less gas. Between 13/12/16 and 13/01/17 we used 54% less gas (but we were away over Christmas and New Year and used Hive to switch to frost protection) and between 13/01 and 13/02/2017 we used 18% less gas (it was cold at the beginning of the year!). Tomorrow I will receive my energy statement and can do the calculation or 13/02 to 13/03. I may be becoming a bit obsessive!:)

Edited to add: for the avoidance of doubt, the consumption I gave the supplier was what was actually used the previous year, less 10% as an assumption of the saving because of the new boiler being more efficient.

southcoastrgi

phil24_7 wrote: »

Hi Southcoast

Sorry to drag this back up again but we are finally in a position to get a boiler installed at my parents house. I've been looking at the Baxi's and I can see little, if any difference between the EcoBlue+, EcoBlue Advanced, Duo-Tec and the Platinum. What are the differences and why do you recommend the EcoBlue+ over say, the Platinum?

Regards
Phil

Hi Phil, the duotec & platinum are well proven boilers & have been around for years & are both as bullet proof as it comes, very straight forward to use with easy controls on the front, the ecoblue's are a few years old & as such have a higher degree of modern controls & the front panel isn't as easy to understand as the duo or plat, however where they do score higher is their ability to go down to a lower heat output so if your folks system only required say 5 kw then they would match that whereas the duo & plat can't go down that far so would give more heat & use more gas than required at that time, if you were to ask my opinion your folks won't need all the bells & whistles so I'd go for either the duo or plat just depends if you want 7 or 10 yrs warentee

spirit

lisa110rry wrote: »

I'm smiling at the thought of Phil's parents being "an old couple" in their 60s and early 70s!:rotfl:

For purposes of completeness, we replaced our old Vaillant with a new Vaillant Ecotek in June with Hive to manage our heating. It's brilliant. Our energy supplier, So Energy, shows a bar chart of expected consumption month on month and I did a screen shot of it in November so I can calculate saving over estimated, which I have done this morning using my monthly readings. Between 13/11 and 13/12/2016 we used 30% less gas. Between 13/12/16 and 13/01/17 we used 54% less gas (but we were away over Christmas and New Year and used Hive to switch to frost protection) and between 13/01 and 13/02/2017 we used 18% less gas (it was cold at the beginning of the year!). Tomorrow I will receive my energy statement and can do the calculation or 13/02 to 13/03. I may be becoming a bit obsessive!:)

Edited to add: for the avoidance of doubt, the consumption I gave the supplier was what was actually used the previous year, less 10% as an assumption of the saving because of the new boiler being more efficient.

I bought that model 2 yrs ago too Lisa. Oddly enough, had to have the Vaillant service engineer out yesterday as I'd had an F32 fan fault on it. the installer wasn't available to come out, so Vaillant sent someone. What a nice guy he was, I phoned the helpline after to tell his manager that he was very helpful. I digress, seemingly the installer hadn't put guards on the wiring and a wire had come loose.


I'm about to exchange contracts here and move elsewhere and was worried that Vaillant were not reliable,but seemingly it was an install fault and not the boiler itself.


so i'll be replacing the one in the new house with a Vaillant too.

Alex1983

I go vaillant every single day over a baxi. Try speaking to baxi technical help desk they are useless.

Alex1983

The thing with picking your boiler manufacturer is everyone will give there own opinion and you will get people say pick this one or pick this one.

From experience of service and repairing boilers for 15 years plus I would say that vaillant haven't made many bad boilers over the years, I can only really think of the ecomax range from about 15 years ago that wasn't much good. There is more plastic in a new vaillant compared to years ago but this has not caused me any issues and I've seen no drop in realiablity.
When I think back to baxi over the years there boiler ranges have been plagued with problems, 100he range, Barcelona's, Bahamas's, 105he's, combi instant, and genesis range are all very temperamental. When I put that with baxi techelp I would pick vaillant everyday.

The new baxi ranges may prove to be realiable and very good boilers but only time will tell and I personally wouldn't take that chance in my own house.

thescouselander

Had a new baxi in an old rental place. The landlord must have spent thousands on repairs as it went wrong continuously. That put me off for good.

We've got a WB now. Guaranteed for 10 years and if it does go wrong the bloke who installed it lives a few doors down from me. For me I don't like to gamble on whether something will go wrong - supportability and being able to correct issues quickly and cheaply is the most important thing.

phil24_7

southcoastrgi wrote: »

Hi Phil, the duotec & platinum are well proven boilers & have been around for years & are both as bullet proof as it comes, very straight forward to use with easy controls on the front, the ecoblue's are a few years old & as such have a higher degree of modern controls & the front panel isn't as easy to understand as the duo or plat, however where they do score higher is their ability to go down to a lower heat output so if your folks system only required say 5 kw then they would match that whereas the duo & plat can't go down that far so would give more heat & use more gas than required at that time, if you were to ask my opinion your folks won't need all the bells & whistles so I'd go for either the duo or plat just depends if you want 7 or 10 yrs warentee

Thank you kindly South Coast.

spirit

Alex1983 wrote: »

The thing with picking your boiler manufacturer is everyone will give there own opinion and you will get people say pick this one or pick this one.

From experience of service and repairing boilers for 15 years plus I would say that vaillant haven't made many bad boilers over the years, I can only really think of the ecomax range from about 15 years ago that wasn't much good. There is more plastic in a new vaillant compared to years ago but this has not caused me any issues and I've seen no drop in realiablity.
When I think back to baxi over the years there boiler ranges have been plagued with problems, 100he range, Barcelona's, Bahamas's, 105he's, combi instant, and genesis range are all very temperamental. When I put that with baxi techelp I would pick vaillant everyday.

The new baxi ranges may prove to be realiable and very good boilers but only time will tell and I personally wouldn't take that chance in my own house.

Had a Baxi in my last house - never again.


some people rate the Worcester Bosch, but then some say that parts aren't as readily available. they do have a 10 yr warranty now so I guess that must mean the manufacturers have confidence in it. Plus it's a good name, but.


I'm sticking to what I know.

southcoastrgi

Vailliant rubber hoses that block up & now mostly plastic
WB nightmare to work on, service or repair, mostly plastic, treat installers as idiots

southcoastrgi

thescouselander wrote: »

Had a new baxi in an old rental place. The landlord must have spent thousands on repairs as it went wrong continuously. That put me off for good.

We've got a WB now. Guaranteed for 10 years and if it does go wrong the bloke who installed it lives a few doors down from me. For me I don't like to gamble on whether something will go wrong - supportability and being able to correct issues quickly and cheaply is the most important thing.

I'm confused you had a new Baxi that would be under warentee yet the LL spent thousands in repairs

Your plastic boiler is guaranteed for 10 yrs but the most important thing is being able to correct issues cheaply ?