Hi all,
I can imagine the groans at the title of this thread, but was hoping to see if anyone here has any other options which I or the plumbers that have been round to take a look may have not thought about.
Essentially my curent combi (an Ideal evo c22/35 with DHW input of 36.0kw) has conked out in a terminal fashion and needs replacing pronto. This boiler is in the loft and water pressure measure 3 bar at the garden tap and around 25l/min from a downstair utility cold tap. Its a 4 bed house, soon to be 4 of us in the house, 1 main bathroom, 1 downstairs shower room. Need it replaced asap before the kind warm autumn weather takes a turn!
Now for the issues:
- Combi swap: the gas pipe might be an issue, I have a fairly long run of 22m gas pipe which goes from the meter outside my front door under my ground (hardwood floored which won't easily go back down) floor, under my stairs , under the first floor, up a stud wall into the loft. Quite a long run in all with quite a few bends - rough estimate of 15m equivalent of which 3m can easily be cut out (it goes in a loop at one stage in the loft). This caused one installer to walk away as he couldn't take the risk of re-piping the gas and couldn't take current measurements due to dead boiler. The other two said they could re-pipe if necessary, likely at quite significant cost and route up the side of my house to avoid ripping up the hardwood floor. However, they were both fairly confident that if I had a 35kw boiler in now (serviced by BG who never said the supply was an issue), then there was a decent chance that a new one of 35kw would be ok but I shouldn't go bigger. On a straight swap the best options suggested to me looks like it will be the Vaillant 835 (10Y Guarantee and DHW input of 35.7kw). I should also be getting a quote for an Intergas 36/30 (but with 5Y Guarantee - I think this has DHW input of 32.7kw but am not sure). Know ATAGs are highly thought off, but their 35ic model actually quotes an DHW input of 40.3kw which I don't think I can risk.
- Integrated storage boiler/combi storage. Saw these and thought it was a really good balance between system/cylinder set up and combi set up (which I don't think I can do easily at all - see below). The Vaillant 938 looked great except that I could run into gas supply issues. Worcester Bosch (which some on here hate I know) do the 440 High Flow - but its bigger than my loft hatch. Saw some recommendations about a Atmos Multi but not sure if those still exist as haven't been able to find much on these other than some installation manuals.
(As further information - In respect of a system/cylinder set up which would let me drop the boiler size and comfortably avoid gas pipe issues, I really liked this option. That is until one installer said that I couldn't get it through my loft hatch with the various connections that protrude from a cylinder and also the loft hatch is positioned away from the roof apex such that it would be cylinder over 1.2/1.3m in. I saw that the OSO SC is one that is recommended by some here and that doesn't have so many bits that protrude (he wasn't familiar with this brand), but it still requires deconstructing the loft hatch. Also this may add several days to install time (although I would sacrifice that for the right system).)
So, for anyone still awake after reading the above, I'm looking for advice on:
Thanks.
I can imagine the groans at the title of this thread, but was hoping to see if anyone here has any other options which I or the plumbers that have been round to take a look may have not thought about.
Essentially my curent combi (an Ideal evo c22/35 with DHW input of 36.0kw) has conked out in a terminal fashion and needs replacing pronto. This boiler is in the loft and water pressure measure 3 bar at the garden tap and around 25l/min from a downstair utility cold tap. Its a 4 bed house, soon to be 4 of us in the house, 1 main bathroom, 1 downstairs shower room. Need it replaced asap before the kind warm autumn weather takes a turn!
Now for the issues:
- Combi swap: the gas pipe might be an issue, I have a fairly long run of 22m gas pipe which goes from the meter outside my front door under my ground (hardwood floored which won't easily go back down) floor, under my stairs , under the first floor, up a stud wall into the loft. Quite a long run in all with quite a few bends - rough estimate of 15m equivalent of which 3m can easily be cut out (it goes in a loop at one stage in the loft). This caused one installer to walk away as he couldn't take the risk of re-piping the gas and couldn't take current measurements due to dead boiler. The other two said they could re-pipe if necessary, likely at quite significant cost and route up the side of my house to avoid ripping up the hardwood floor. However, they were both fairly confident that if I had a 35kw boiler in now (serviced by BG who never said the supply was an issue), then there was a decent chance that a new one of 35kw would be ok but I shouldn't go bigger. On a straight swap the best options suggested to me looks like it will be the Vaillant 835 (10Y Guarantee and DHW input of 35.7kw). I should also be getting a quote for an Intergas 36/30 (but with 5Y Guarantee - I think this has DHW input of 32.7kw but am not sure). Know ATAGs are highly thought off, but their 35ic model actually quotes an DHW input of 40.3kw which I don't think I can risk.
- Integrated storage boiler/combi storage. Saw these and thought it was a really good balance between system/cylinder set up and combi set up (which I don't think I can do easily at all - see below). The Vaillant 938 looked great except that I could run into gas supply issues. Worcester Bosch (which some on here hate I know) do the 440 High Flow - but its bigger than my loft hatch. Saw some recommendations about a Atmos Multi but not sure if those still exist as haven't been able to find much on these other than some installation manuals.
(As further information - In respect of a system/cylinder set up which would let me drop the boiler size and comfortably avoid gas pipe issues, I really liked this option. That is until one installer said that I couldn't get it through my loft hatch with the various connections that protrude from a cylinder and also the loft hatch is positioned away from the roof apex such that it would be cylinder over 1.2/1.3m in. I saw that the OSO SC is one that is recommended by some here and that doesn't have so many bits that protrude (he wasn't familiar with this brand), but it still requires deconstructing the loft hatch. Also this may add several days to install time (although I would sacrifice that for the right system).)
So, for anyone still awake after reading the above, I'm looking for advice on:
- Whether anyone thinks of any other issues that I may need to be considering/anything obvious I've missed?
- Whether there are other combi boilers which would be more highly recommended over the Vaillant?
- If there are other storage combi etc out there which have kw input <36 and could fit through a loft hatch of around 570mm x 600mm (could remove some loft hatch surround to make it a few cm wider)?
Thanks.