Thank you for comments. Unfortunately we didn't have time for 3 quotes... and it is January, albeit a warm one. We wanted hot water! If we could have had it repaired we would but it really didn't seem that this would work. This engineer came round to have a look at it early December and said to start with a service in case something simple. This showed up that the gas pressure wasn't rising when the water was turned on... (we had had a problem with hot water for months. Also...the system used to turn itself of every now and again, and need reset. And sometimes the room stat would call for the boiler to come on but it wouldn't respond). He did an hour fact finding and noticed that there was scorching on the PCB and things pointed to it being a problem. This was before Christmas and he said we could get a new PCB.... but if it didn't solve the problem we would still have to pay.... and that there might be more problems.... and that a new PCB might be £3-400. We left him to price it over Christmas... we were going away anyway.
We came back to the house one day between Christmas and New Year and the reset light was on of course. But this time we couldn't reset it. The pilot light wouldn't come on so there was no hot water at all. We promptly headed away again for New Year but set about trying tp get the engineer to get the new boiler. We didn't even ask about the PCB at that stage, but I did yesterday and he said he thought it might have been £150. Maybe that would have fixed all the problems, maybe it wouldn't.
From an environmental point of view I would jave much preferred to mend and make do, but this was the second engineer to tell us that we should get a new boiler.
Bizarrely he told us that the system would probably be up and running by Friday evening (he was only starting on Friday morning!). But of course he was only starting the powerflushing on Saturday morning. He was going to use something that was non-acidic but then realised that that needed to stay in the system for a week so instead he used an acid one, but at a lower dose that normal ( so that it wouldn't corrode the oldish radiators too much). This then needed an alkaline neutraliser put in. And he told us that he was going to put some neutralizer in afterwards.
By yesterday afternoon it was going. Yay! But then he mentioned that he hadn't realised that there weren't TRVs installed ( I had in fact previously discussed it with him) and obviously hadn't quoted for the cost of installing them. He said he thought that they were in the system as it has a room stat and a diverter valve, and you don't normally have a diverter valve without TRVs.
I didn't think that TRVs were necessary but he said they were for building regulations. So he said since he had forgot to quote for it he would sign of the system as meeting regulations to CORGI but if they checked then they would point out the absence of TRVs. I asked how much it would be to install TRVs and he said it would be £12 per valve but 1.5hrs labour per valve. So this would work out at £80 per valve, for 7 valves, so £560. I said we wouldn't be getting it done! I have since seen on here that £30/valve is sometimes charged.
Does any of the above sound reasonable?
Thanks
AM