New combi boiler

piperm87

Hi all.

I need to upgrade my boiler as the current one is on its last legs. I think im going to have to go down the interest free route as we dont have the spare money to pay cash at the minute. Ive looked online at the bigger names ie heatable, boxt etc but i have no experience with any of these sites.
 
Im just wondering if any one on here has used any of the interest free sites before and what were your experiences?

  Many Thanks

CSI_Yorkshire

I used Heatable about 2 months ago - same reason as you, I wanted the 0% credit.

They were great.  They noticed that some other quotes I'd had were for boilers that wouldn't actually work in my system (and that meant I actually ordered the wrong boiler from them online), had an installer ring me up with some questions once I'd sent photos of my existing setup to make sure they knew exactly what I wanted and that it would work, and the actual installer they sent to do the work was great.

Not a combi - I have an unvented tank system - so a little more complicated than a straight combi swap.

FreeBear

piperm87 said: I'm just wondering if any one on here has used any of the interest free sites before and what were your experiences?

I had a quote from Eon.Next - Silly money for a Worcester Bosch (which I didn't really want)... My first choice was an Intergas, but couldn't find anyone offering interest free installs in my area at a reasonable price.

Ended up going for a Viessmann with a national outfit offering 0% finance - When I got to the stage of stumping up the cash, I wanted to pay a deposit on credit card of £100 minimum so that I could get S.75 protection. No option to pay a deposit with the 0% finance. Ended up bunging the whole lot on credit card and tapping in to other sources of interest free cash to repay the CC.

The boiler installation commenced on the day I had booked, and the engineer turned up on time, and then disappeared for a couple of hours to chase after parts (parts that were delivered an hour later). A wasp nest put paid to routing of the gas pipe until the little burgers had been dealt with. The following week, the engineer returned to do the installation - The delay was advantageous, as it meant I could order some extra flue sections & bends after rethinking the routing of the flue. Job still didn't get completed that day..... Day three, system was filled, checked for leaks, flushed, and then commissioned. A few days later, got a Gas Safe certificate, Building Regs compliance certificate, and boiler warranty.

Work I had to do -

• Wire the boiler up to the fused spur switch (engineer didn't "do" electrics).
• Cut & fit noggins in a flat roof and bolt the flue support brackets to them (engineer didn't "do" carpentry)
• Make good plasterwork where holes had been drilled through the walls for flue & gas pipe)
• Clean up the mess left behind.
• Install the Protective Equipotential Bonding on the gas pipe (company refused to pay an electrician to do it, said I was responsible for the cost).

To my mind, the PEB was part & parcel of the installation, and shouldn't have been signed off until that bit had been done. I also have concerns that the gas pipe is too small for the length of run & number of bends. Pretty sure the engineer didn't check for pressure drop when the boiler was running at full capacity..

The penultimate fly in the ointment that I was left to deal with - Trying to program the thermostat/timer, I find the boiler hadn't been configured to work with it (another Gas Safe/Building Regs failure). Ended up going through all the boiler menu options to configure the parameters that the "engineer" should have done.

One final job to do is to move the magnetic filter to a location I had wanted - The engineer has installed it directly under the boiler where it is next to impossible to access. It should have been mounted ~100mm to the side like I told him to do <grrrrr>.... That will have to wait until I drain the system down.

On the plus side, I got £100 refunded for some flue parts that were ordered but not used. Also didn't get charged for an extra ~2m of gas pipe at £30 per metre.

Based on my single experience, I would suggest the following.

Contact a few local installers and get some quotes. One or two may be able to offer credit and maybe have a 0% option. Compare the quotes with ones you get from Boxt, Heatable, etc, and make your choice. Pay a minimum of £100 via credit card which ever supplier you go for. Make sure the CC is direct, and not via PayPal or some other escrow service, and that way you have some additional protections as a consumer.

Make sure you get a list of what works the installer is responsible for (e.g. electrics), and what you are responsible for (filling holes & redecorating).

piperm87

Wow! Thats some experience you had there!

Im looking around 3 - 3.5k if i go via an online interest free site. Im looking at a 30kw or 35kw at the minute. You may remember the issues i had during winter with our current 28kw - rads not working properly and some not working at all! We have 9 big doubles and 1 big double steel vertical and im looking at adding another rad too at some point and i dont think the current 17 year old worcester is man enough to cover the installation. 

I was speaking with my brother in law yesterday and he gave me the details of a local company he used for his install who offered interest free so I may give them a call and see what they can offer too. I want it moving too which seems to cost a ridiculously large amount aswell.  So annoying! 

FreeBear

Two things to do - Measure your water flow coming out of the taps. Stick a bucket (say 5 litre) under the bath tap, and time how long it takes to fill. Do the same test with the kitchen tap (it will be lower if it is a monoblock mixer). For me, a 5l container filled in about 30 seconds which gave me a flow rate of ~10l per minute.

Next, measure the size of your radiators, and using online charts available from the likes of Stelrad, work out just how much heat output the radiators add up to.

Once you have that information to hand, you can start looking at boilers - For a heat only (or system) boiler, you need to select one based on the heat demand of the radiators. For a combi, sizing is dependent on the cold water flow rate.

With a flow rate of 10l/min, a Viessmann 25KW combi would have been sufficient, and it would provide 2.9-17.1KW for central heating (which is plenty, as I have ~10KW of radiators). Went for a 30KW boiler as I intend to fit a booster pump on the cold water supply, and that model provides 2.9-22.4KW to the radiators (way more than I need). As both models modulate down to 2.9KW and will supply more heat than needed, there is nothing to chose from on the central heating side. It just boils down to capacity to heat the hot water and price.

If the combi stayed in the same location as your existing boiler and there is no additional plumbing required, you should be able to get a new boiler for £2.5K - Mine was about that, but I had done all the plumbing for central heating & hot water myself (including extended pressure test). New pipework, new radiators (with "free" TRVs), etc. If I had to pay someone to do the additional work, it could have been £5-8K. Moving the boiler to an alternative location would add another £750-1000 on top depending on where it was moved to. But if you can do the plumbing yourself, it should be possible to get that cost down. from memory, Eon.Next were quoting around £4.2K to swap the Baxi back boiler with a combi, so that would have included extra plumbing (new radiators would have been extra). So worth my while doing the plumbing myself, and I get stuff where I want, not where an engineer thinks is best.

piperm87

Is that the cold water or hot water for the flow rate?

I checked the cold and were getting nearly 12l per minute and after checking the rads were currently using 12kw of heating capacity but that will go up to 18kw once ive been round and upgraded all the old rads for new and added a few. 

My parents have the same style / built house as us as they live on the same estate and they have a 32kw worcester and they have no issues in their house 

rob7475

I had to replace my combi in January and ended up going direct with Worcester Bosch through their fast track service. They came out cheaper than any of the other online providers. They were also cheaper than a local company I had in to quote.

I'm not sure if they offer finance but would a 0% credit card be an option? Most of the places offering 0% finance on boilers are loading the interest onto the price to start with 

ciderboy2009

I never thought that I would say this but I've just ordered a new boiler installation from British Gas.

Yes, they were about £500 more expensive that elsewhere.  However, there were two things that persuaded me to go with them:

1) They've got a 4 year, no deposit, interest free offer.

2) You get full Central Heating cover for the first year and the equivalent of boiler cover for years 2 to 5 (you just have to pay for a service in years 2 to 5).  Even allowing for the services at their full price this would save me around £1,500 (my wife doesn't like the idea of self-insuring so we have always paid for their cover).

FreeBear

piperm87 said:

Is that the cold water or hot water for the flow rate?

I checked the cold and were getting nearly 12l per minute and after checking the rads were currently using 12kw of heating capacity but that will go up to 18kw once ive been round and upgraded all the old rads for new and added a few. 

My parents have the same style / built house as us as they live on the same estate and they have a 32kw worcester and they have no issues in their house 

With a maximum of 18KW heat load, a 25KW combi will just about cope. With a 12l flow rate, you'd need around 30KW depending on how hot you want your water - a 32KW WB would quite likely be suitable.

And yes, the flow rate of the water is for the cold side - I had a gravity fed hot water system that just dribbled water out of the taps.