Another boiler with a 15mm feed question

[coldasfcuk]

I have read most of the posts in the forum on this, and I think I already know the answer to this question, but some advice / hope would be quite good.

Like many, I have a 15mm feed from my meter to my boiler. All the floors between the meter and the boiler are concrete. Going round the outside of the house is all concrete. And to make matters worse, the current boiler + flue doesn't sit on an outside facing wall, the flue goes up through the roof.

Current setup:
2 and a half bed end of terrace house
Potterton Flamingo 50 (fitted in 1980 and still going)
Roughly a 10 meter run from meter to boiler with 5 x 90 degree bends
Gas hob, but electric oven
Electric shower
Small hot water tank

What I was thinking about getting is a Valliant ecoTEC Plus 615 or 618. We would need to extend the gas pipe to reach an outside wall, which would probably add another 2 meters maximum to the total length of the gas feed.

Moving the boiler closer to the gas meter isn't an option as it's such a small house there is literally no where to put it. Moving the boiler upstairs is an option, if I plan of getting a combi and removing the hot water tank, but that presents several other logistical problems.

While my boiler is still working, I realise it's over 30 years old and that is a good innings for any boiler, so I am trying to plan ahead. Given both of these boilers are fairly small and both of these boilers take a 15mm feed, what do you think the odds are that we would have to replace all the 15mm pipe with 22mm pipe?

Thanks in advance for any advice
David

 

[Tibbot]

There are no 'odds', it's an exact calculation. Your current boiler's supply may or may not be undersized, so could the new one, but it's not guess work.

 

[Agile]

Just why can the new 22 mm gas supply not run up the outside wall?

Tony

 

[coldasfcuk]

For a combi boiler moving the boiler upstairs, yes we can run the gas supply up the outside wall, then across the front of the house, the problem then is drainage. We can't run a drain straight down as it will cover a window. And another poorly designed feature of our house is there is no down pipe, instead the down pipe is at the end of the terrace, 2 houses down.

We were also told that we can't have a gas pipe run un-protected past the front door. Not sure if this is correct or not? An engineer told us, it could become damaged with people kicking it. The best option is the either go over the front door, or bury the pipe, again resulting in digging up the concrete.

 

[Agile]

Any drain or gas pipe can be dog legged to pass a window.

Gas pipes are best taken upwards and across a building at floor level ( where there are no windows).

I don't see why your people are just mentioning difficulties and not solutions.

Although I admit that many in this industry are not very customer friendly and I expect they did a lot of sucking through their teeth!

To me none of the imagined problems seem to be of any significant problem at all. Every job needs to be planned to meet the requirements.

Tony

 

[coldasfcuk]

To me none of the imagined problems seem to be of any significant problem at all. Every job needs to be planned to meet the requirements.

Agreed, although I do wish house builders made pipes accessible for situations like this and didn't bury them under 10cms of concrete.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Pipes are buried at certain depths for a reason.