Gas Central Heating - Which Boiler?

mancitychick

We have just moved house and it has electric Storage Heating. I have been quote £401 by Transco to run Gas into the house.

I have some Companies coming to quote on Friday to install GCH, they have asked what type of boiler I want? I said condesening but apparently they are all condesening now(?).

I really do not have a clue?

Any advice on what type of boiler I should be looking at having. Or anything else I should be asking the guys that come to quote - 2 small firms plus British Gas.

If it helps I have a four bedroom house and are looking at 12 radiators (this includes small one each for d/stairs loo and utility room).

calleyw

I have just had a worcester condensing combi put in. Not sure of the model but seems to be ok.

I paid for 7 rads and boiler £4,100. And that was some pipe work already in place. Was told that BG would charge approx £8K to fit the same.

Yours

Calley

alanobrien

mancitychick wrote:

We have just moved house and it has electric Storage Heating. I have been quote £401 by Transco to run Gas into the house.

I have some Companies coming to quote on Friday to install GCH, they have asked what type of boiler I want? I said condesening but apparently they are all condesening now(?).

I really do not have a clue?

Any advice on what type of boiler I should be looking at having. Or anything else I should be asking the guys that come to quote - 2 small firms plus British Gas.

If it helps I have a four bedroom house and are looking at 12 radiators (this includes small one each for d/stairs loo and utility room).

Ohhhh big subject but your place sounds a similar size to mine.

You need to decide what type of system and hence boiler
you want.

Some people like combi's which are cheap to run and allow you to have a dry loft but mostly have dire hot water flow rates.

Others (like me) like storage systems with an airing cupboard, a bit more costly to run but loads of hot water
with good flow rates and an emmersion heater as back up if the boiler decides not to work one day.

As regards makes you cant go wrong with either Vaillant or Worcester Bosch most of the (better) heating engineers i have dealt with recommend these.

Dont forget you will also need TRV's on at least the rads
in the bedrooms for a system retrofit.

Whatever they offer i would advise getting a boiler with a stainless steel heat exchanger not aluminium as most of the cheaper brands are........they corrode nicely in the condensate.

Incidentally as a guide BG quoted me £4800 to replace the boiler with one of their own nasty cheapo makes. :eek:

I ended up paying 2k for full fitting and heat pack on a vaillant system boiler which costs 1k retail so i consider
that a good deal here.

One thing is for sure, you will be spoilt for choice !

Doglover88

hi mancitychick
like calleyw ive just had a worcester condensing combi boiler fitted, a 28i junior, boiler cost approx £840 and a further £700 to relocate it into another room upstairs so to free up some space in the kitchen. If you do a search of my posts you should find quite a lot on the subject, i asked loads of questions and got a really good response too
Good luck
Glen

weekendwarrior

Hi,

I have two friends who are gas fitters and they swear by Bosch Worcester, they are very good, reliable boilers and should give you years of trouble free use!

mancitychick

alanobrien wrote:

Some people like combi's which are cheap to run and allow you to have a dry loft but mostly have dire hot water flow rates.

Others (like me) like storage systems with an airing cupboard, a bit more costly to run but loads of hot water
with good flow rates and an emmersion heater as back up if the boiler decides not to work one day.

!

If I decide to go for the storage system etc, what type of boiler would it mean?

I am thinking I could use the exisiting hotwater tank in the airing cupboard to store the water as poor flow rates is something I have had the displeasure of experiencing before.

alanobrien

mancitychick wrote:

I am thinking I could use the exisiting hotwater tank in the airing cupboard to store the water as poor flow rates is something I have had the displeasure of experiencing before. If I decide to go for the storage system etc, what type of boiler would it mean?

That's exactly what i did !

OK, so if you want a stored hot water system then your best bet will be to get a "system" boiler.

This is basically a standard boiler with the expansion tank and pump built in and it runs under pressure (about 1 bar) so it is more efficient and less costly to install than an open vented standard boiler.

A condensing system boiler is preferred as the efficiency levels are supposed to be higher than std boilers. Anyway, most heating engineers will not fit non-condensing these days.

I had a Vaillant 622E system boiler fitted a while back, here is a link just so you can see what these things look like.

http://www.vaillant.co.uk/folder.php?folder_default_tree=10324-10330-10333&folder_default_netfolderID=10333

Other than that you would need one 3 way or two single zone valves. I prefer two single valves, one for the hot water one for the heating as its easier to identify which has failed when something goes wrong later on as it surely will one day.

On top of that a good 5/2 or 7 day programmer and room stat are usually fitted. Lots of choice here.

And as i mentioned dont forget TRV's on the rads, these are now compulsory (building regs) and can help to save cash on fuel bills so worthwhile imho.

MyUserNamesTaken

I'm about to have a new Vaillant Ecomax condensing combi fitted. You'll find that the better the make of combi, the better the flow rate for hot water. BG don't use cheapo makes, either. The boiler they use is a rebadged Worcester Bosch. You'll need three TRVs and a room stat fitted to bring the system up to standard (I'm having a wireless room stat, as it's easier to install). My system's going to cost me £3118 (inc.), including a new water main into my house, as my old one's complete crap (really bad water pressure). The cost of the water main accounts for approx. £1k of the cost. There's not much in it when you compare Vaillant and Bosch.

alanobrien

MyUserNamesTaken wrote:

BG don't use cheapo makes, either. The boiler they use is a rebadged Worcester Bosch.

Indeed they do, Dont know about badged Worcester's but they do lots of others including baxi, glow worm and Ideal........hardly quality makes.


Here's there list;

http://www.house.co.uk/cgi-bin/house//house/general/editorial.jsp?BV_SessionID=HHHH1495545456.1126785742HHHH&BV_EngineID=ccccaddfjkjigehcefecfngdfhidflo.0&_txtName=detail_different_types_of_boilers&_linkKey=chc_diff_boiler&_strType=INLINE

MyUserNamesTaken

alanobrien wrote:

Indeed they do, Dont know about badged Worcester's but they do lots of others including baxi, glow worm and Ideal........hardly quality makes.


Here's there list;

http://www.house.co.uk/cgi-bin/house//house/general/editorial.jsp?BV_SessionID=HHHH1495545456.1126785742HHHH&BV_EngineID=ccccaddfjkjigehcefecfngdfhidflo.0&_txtName=detail_different_types_of_boilers&_linkKey=chc_diff_boiler&_strType=INLINE

Strange. When I had the man for BG come round to give me a quote, he said they only use rebranded Worcester Bosch now.

uncle_buck_3

Have a look at the Alpha CD50 Condensing Storage Combination Boiler
...all of your problems solved... Loads of hot water on tap ...A cracking piece of kit.

http://www.alpha-boilers.com/products/CD50.html