Wrong boiler

TommyGG

• Bought house in May 2019
• Have installation certificate saying Potteron 24 boiler installed April 2019
• Boiler not working so good!
• Found the slide out tab on boiler showing it's a Potteron 15 (way less KW!)

Guessing there's nothing we can do here except buy a new boiler, but do we have any rights with the building company that installed it to get the model their certificate said they installed? Guessing not and they'll just say the certificate is wrong...

davidmcn

[STRIKE]What do you mean by "building company" here? Did you buy the whole house as a newbuild? Or do you mean contractors instructed by the previous owners?[/STRIKE]Ok, can figure out from your previous thread that it wasn't a newbuild you bought. So did you not inspect the boiler? At what stage in the process were you shown the installation certificate? What did the vendors tell you about the boiler?

In any event, by "not working so good" is it a fault covered by the boiler guarantee?

[Deleted User]

TommyGG wrote: »

Guessing there's nothing we can do here except buy a new boiler

For a 6 month old boiler, I'd have thought it would be worth attempting a repair.

Most boilers will last a little longer than half a year before needing to be scrapped.

pinkteapot

Surely it's under warranty if it's only 6 months old?

Of course if the problem is that it's not powerful enough for the size of house then the warranty won't cover that.

need_an_answer

When you say the boiler isn't working so good....do you mean its working but not to the capacity that you would expect?

If that's the case then,yes if you want more power you may need to upgrade the boiler...its doing what its limitation is and that doesn't match your expectation.

I would however contact whomever issued the documentation for the installation especially if the other details on the certification relate to your property.

Yes it may just be a typo but ideally you should expect the details on the certification to match what was installed.

AdrianC

TommyGG wrote: »

• Bought house in May 2019
• Have installation certificate saying Potteron 24 boiler installed April 2019
• Boiler not working so good!
• Found the slide out tab on boiler showing it's a Potteron 15 (way less KW!)

Guessing there's nothing we can do here except buy a new boiler, but do we have any rights with the building company that installed it to get the model their certificate said they installed? Guessing not and they'll just say the certificate is wrong...

There's two possibilities here.

1. Somebody's simply put the wrong model number on the certificate.
2. Somebody's removed the boiler that was fitted in April, replaced it with one of lower capacity, which has been fitted without any checks.

I know which I think is most likely.

You've bought a non-new-build house, so it's simply down to caveat emptor. Six months after purchase, you have no hope of any come-back at all on anybody. Although, having said that, you never really did on the vendor, and you never did on the installer at all, since you had no contract with them.

You don't say which precise model of boiler it is, or whether it's system or combi, but the only 15kW boilers they do are the lower end of model ranges which go a chunk higher - so swapping out for a higher-capacity equivalent will be straightforward.
https://www.potterton.co.uk/products/gas-boilers/assure-system
https://www.potterton.co.uk/products/gas-boilers/ultra-system

Both are "system boilers", so feed a hot water tank, rather than heat-on-demand combis, so lower capacity will simply mean it takes a bit longer to get the tank to the same temperature. Leave it on longer. Of course, being lower capacity, it'll use less gas per minute of burn, so may not actually use more to heat same amount of water to the same temp.