New oil boiler - can I get any help?

Zeggybobleggy · 17 October 2020 at 4:26PM

Our oil boiler is 20 years old (ish). The overflow valve leaks constantly and it occasionally cuts out so it works but is certainly on its last legs. I'm due our first baby on 1st December and have been made redundant. Thank god my husband has managed to keep his job, which makes our household income £25k. We have savings of about £9k to see us through. We were hoping to get a new boiler installed and have it moved to an outdoor boiler before baby is here. We've had problems getting quotes due to covid and have recently been quoted at just under £8k. This is far more than we were expecting.
I'm trying to work out if we can get any help. I was told we have too much in savings to be eligible for universal credit (which is completely fair) but it looks like all help for a boiler is cut off if you're not claiming benefits and it doesn't look like there's any help for oil boilers anyway, it's all gas. So we could use nearly all of our savings to pay for a boiler but have little left to see us through the first few months of baby's life. But then I feel like, ridiculously, we might be in a position to claim for help with a boiler if you follow? Bevause our savings will have been depleted but at that point it's too late.
Basically I was wondering if anyone could point us in the direction of any help or make any suggestion. If there's no help out there then that's fair enough but if there's help there and I don't make the most of it I'll be kicking myself, especially as the amount we have in savings directly impacts how much time I'll be able to spend with baby before having to try and find work.
Thank you.

Apodemus · 17 October 2020 at 4:39PM

Congrats on the baby and commiserations on the redundancy. In your shoes, I think I'd look at getting the current boiler fixed rather than incurring the costs of replacement at present. Most oil boilers are largely a relatively random assemblage of low-tech components, so if you can find a genuine heating engineer (rather than someone who is simply a service technician) you might find that the existing set-up can keep going a bit longer, at least until you are in a better position to replace it.