Which is best Condenser Boiler to buy?

Edsplumbing wrote: »

Hi my advice with 15 years experience is fit Worchester bosch they are the most popular and when they break down any plumber can fix them.
Do not fit vailant they are over complicated and less plumbers know how to fix them.
Only vailant registered fitters say they are good thats because its in their interest.
Reliability and ease of repair should be your concern not is this one more efficient than this one, they are all efficient.

Rubbish. If any boiler is deliberately designed to be difficult to work on its the latest Worcester Bosch Compact. Any plumber cannot fix them unless they are Gas qualified and Gas Safe registered. Many plumbers are not.

I'm just off to fix a Worcester 28cdi rsf that is p**sing water out. I get plenty of work fixing them. The Vaillants on my patch are quite well behaved, but all boilers fail and quality in general has fallen as they have become more complex, more lightly constructed and full of electronics. No make is immune from this decline and that includes WB I'm afraid.

I don't know where you get the idea from that Vaillants are more complicated and difficult to repair than a WB as it's simply not true. Access to components on a Vaillant is vastly superior to any WB. They tend to be made of better materials too, using a stainless steel main heat exchanger instead of an aluminium casting which WB use along with most mid range boilers

chippmaker wrote: »

hi I think you will find that Worcester boilers was an English company who invented the combination boiler in the 60s.in Worcestershire.england.and still make them in England. the company was taken over by bosch in 2001

Indeed I have been working on a 23 year old Worcester Highflow (Pre Bosch) combi this very week and its a fine machine and a credit to the Worcester company that Cecil Duckworth created. However the company you see now is effectively a branch of Bosch Thermodynamics and you will see the same boilers all over Europe, exactly as one might expect. I saw them in Venice marketed under the Junkers label (Remember the Junkers 87 Stuka...yes, thats them..owned by Bosch now).

The claim to have invented the combi is contested by the French, the Americans and the Norwegians, with Norwegian Edwin Ruud having produced the first in the USA in the late 19th Century, and exported some to Europe.

Junkers produced a combi in the 1930s. You may know their British arm which was Ascot..the water heater in all bedsits in the mid 20th Century. Vaillant and Chaffoteax produced the first 'modern' combis in about 1963....some time before Worcester it would seem, who started on conventional oil boilers in the early 1960s.

Like all these things its all a bit muddled as many people were developing the idea at much the same time...but nobody predates Edwin Ruud's machine that did heating and hot water in one machine, so maybe he is the true 'inventor' of the combi.

Further historical note: The UK were late coming to the Combi party as our water bylaws forbade connection of a heating appliance to the water main for fear of backflow contamination. The disconnectable filling loop was the compromise they eventually accepted in the late 1970s. Ditto unvented hot water cylinders were common on the continent and illegal here..until 1986!!! Decide for yourself why that was......good public health science or hidebound bureaucracy.....hmmmm!!!

Going to get loads of different opinions unfortunately! I would recommend the obvious Vailant or Worcester Bosch. Personally prefer vaillant but would look into best warranty. Make sure system is cleaned and fit a magnaclean filter should have little problems.