Boiler recommendation

[doitall]

I can just imagine being in the house with 4 people, the boilers broken down again, as they do, regularly.

Its Christmas eve and I can't find/get a plumber till the new year. The joys of having a bake bean can on the wall.

Has anyone considered the small part the mains supply and pressure has, No, mate says I gotta have a combi and he knows best.

Ever thought why these guys push combi's like they're the best thing since slice bread, let me tell you, Maximum Profit for the least work, and when you are caught like a spider in the trap, they make bucket loads of cash ripping you off changing parts at extortionate prices.

rant over

Go on buy a combi, just make sure you have plenty off electric fires stowed away.

And don't forget the powerflush, another bargain at £500 for a few hours work.

 

[Paul Barker]

Get them to fit a biasi combi and see who turns up to fix it in two years when the domestic heat exchanger is blocked.

 

[Alfredo]

What a load of tosh being spouted by the anti combi brigade.

My Vokera Linea has run for six years now and never missed a beat, and gives excellent hot water for a family of four in a three bedroom detached house, and it costs peanuts to run.

Every so often I am the 24hr call out engineer for a large area where we have installed over 3000 combis (Mostly Glow Worm, but some Worcester and now Buderus) over the last six years. We don't get that many problems with them otherwise we wouldn't put them in. Thats not to say we have not refined our installation processes over the years based on what we have learned. My guess is that most of the combis will do 15 years, and yes, we do get the odd one that never runs right at all, but thats not very common.

For oil combis we think the Trianco one is a superb piece of kit. We have so few problems with them and their performance is superb.

Sometimes I have my doubts about combis, but in my usual daytime role as a service engineer I get to speak to many hundreds of tenants, and the vast majority love their combis once they have learned to use them. I quite specifically ask if they'd prefer their old BBU back...and about one in a hundred says yes.

Alfredo

 

[Gasguru]

Combi reliabilty is also down to your location. Here in my part of London I only see 1 in a 100 quality installations. I have yet to see a condensing boiler installed in compliance with the regulations.

Combis are also very dependent on local water conditions. I rarely see scale problems in SE London, down in Plymouth the Vaillants on my brothers new housing estate pack up every few years due to soft calcium deposits blocking the DHW venturi's. It also has a scale reducer that appears to do nothing.

So depending on your location, water quality and local installer base competence will determine the longevity of your boiler (as well as the initial quality of the boiler).

There is no way modern boilers will last anything like 15 years. Firstly parts prices are extortionate (check out spares for many new steamers), secondly there will not be a sufficient number of repair engineers able to repair them, thirdly the moden build it quick design is not condusive to straightforward repairs.

Look at how many problems people have at the moment getting simple faults repaired - wait till all boilers are pre-mix.

 

[Agile]

In the London area 90% of the boiler repairs I go to are as a result of installer errors, 99% being not cleaning the system properly.

I come across boilers installed by non CORGIs for about £100 but that does not include much ( any ) cleaning!

Even many CORGIs dont know that you have to clean a new system.

One Landlord I met had 23 cheap combis but employed people by the day to power flush the systems when they were fitted. With those 23 boilers for up to five years he had never had a single blocked plate HE.

Tony