Ideal Isar 30HE Condensing Combi Boiler or Baxi Combi 105 HE

[daz 4]

Please help (if you can !)

I am in the process of changing over from a very old Potterton floor standing conventional boiler to a condensing boiler in a 3 bedroom property. I have had qoutes on both the Ideal & Baxi boilers, my preference was for the Ideal boiler as this will (I am told) fit into a standard kitchen wall unit.

Does anybody have any opinions or experience with either or both of these boilers ??

Thanks in advance,

Darren

 

[ACOperson]

Avoid Ideal boilers like the plague. Do a search on here about Isar's or Icos's ad you will see what other engineers think of them.

Baxi is better but not great. Why not Worcester Greenstar range, not much more expensive than Baxi if bought from Plumb Centre by someone with a Trade account and who is on decent terms with their branch.

Greenstar 30si is probably around £780 inc flue and timer if your heating engineer buys from a Plumb Centre that he/she uses regularly.

 

[daz 4]

ACOperson - Thanks very much for that I will investigate. Are you an installer as I live just outside of London (Chigwell) ?

Darren

 

[corgiman]

As an ex ideal fitter I could not agree more with ACO

WB or viesmann is what we are fitting they are more expensive but worth it

 

[ollski]

ditto, isars now are worse than ever and that's saying something.

 

[just-thinking]

why are ideal isar and icos boilers not reccomended,i want to fit uk made boilers and many customers ask for ideal.
i have seen some nice looking vailliant combis/system boilers,so much room in side to work on and proven german engineering.also very quite in operation.
i have many worcester boilers on my contracts.been let down by most of them except greenstars.
umm i think german.
any comments please.thanks.

 

[corgiman]

Well my potted history of them is that we were installing them left right and centre without a problem, lovely

then we were getting 50% failure resulting in ideal coming out to sort it, in some cases twice!

I read on here about them and the overall opinion was they arent good, so I went to see the boss and told him that it wasnt just us and he said ****** we aint fitting them no more and low and beehold we aint!!

We were finding PCB failures/ Leaks on the condensate flue/ Strange noises from the fan/ some electrical problems blowing fuses/ water section banging on the isars

there is more but cannot think on them, best keep away.

 

[just-thinking]

corgiman thanks for reply.
sounds like boiler failure not due to installation errors.
also i hear isars preheat dhw so the noisey bugger fires up at random,nice when fitted in a bedroom or hallway.preheat cannot be turned off i believe.
thanks for reply.

 

[corgiman]

you are right the pre heat is a bugger

as for installation faults, not us matey the pipes are soo clean after our powerflush lads have finished you could eat your dinner off em (provided the dinner was soup as you would get a nice piece of steak to stay on a pipe )

We just learned to do it to the umpteenth degree through a few bad experiances but hey you live and learn

 

[ACOperson]

Yep, the contract my firm has has over 1000 Icos/Isar's in operation, most under 3 years old, and its rare for a week to go by where I haven't visited at least 3 which have leaked, PCB failure, banging h/e, or unexplainable and annoying water leaks. I'm talking about boilers which have been very well installed too - nice clean water, plently of inhibitor etc...

Why do you want a British built boiler? Most British engineering is pretty rubbish nowadays.

 

[meldrew's_mate]

...Why do you want a British built boiler? Most British engineering is pretty rubbish nowadays.

Does that include your work too? I have fitted maybe 40 icos/isar in the last 2 years, had only 2 pcb failures (under warranty), one pump failure (warranty), and one blocked main H/E where the dozy builder who went in behind me shifted some rads then left the filling loop cracked open for two years.
Perhaps this guy wants to support British jobs and help to provide real jobs for his kids (and yours!). We can't all sell burgers to each other, someone has to MANUFACTURE, to generate the money to buy the bl***y bread.
So these boilers are good, they're made in Britain (very good), and if you buy the Plumb Centre EVO branded version they are cheaper and have a 3 year warranty.

 

[just-thinking]

installers getting recalls is money lost.and poor pr.
so opt for appliances that give good value.
so its back to the germans ie vailliant as these only fail on crap installations.
hope they do a promotion ..install their boilers for trips to munich beer festival or other interests in hamburgh....
i gave up on ideal after they launched their c80ff combi boiler.its a biasi boiler with an ideal badge but nothing special,bits ware out soon.
happy weekend all.

 

[ACOperson]

Erm Meldrews mate, I don't build or design boilers so no that statement obviously does not include my work.

You state that you have fitted 40 of these units in 2 years and that you have had few failures, does that mean you rarely work on them? Have you ever tried changing any of: PRV, plate h/e, main h/e, CH isolation valves or diverter (ISAR) ? Well I have...every bloody week. None of them are easy jobs as everything is so badly designed and crammed together. One can hardly reach the PRV to test it during a service as there is so much other crap in front of it.

I would be interested in asking you what you think of them in another 2 years when they are all costing your customers bags of money in replacement parts. My firm removed and scrapped at least 3 ICOS/ISAR's all installed for less than 3 years between February and March this year as the cost of constantly replacing parts on them was making the council that owned them very angry. The council in question (one of London's biggest) stopped installing them due to their unreliability and are now putting Vaillants in.

I think that you are either on a wind up, or that you are an Ideal shareholder or something. I'm sure that no-one who has fitted these boilers over a 2 year period would truly be happy with them.

As for your diatribe on British industry and why I should buy British, I'll ask you this: would you have bought a Rover car during the 1990's and been happy about it? If you know anything about cars then the answer would be no. If something is cr@p but made in Britain, its still cr@p. What about the Potterton Puma, fine piece of British engineering there...

Was the re-badged Biasi which Ideal sold for a while designed in Britain? Doubt it.

Or, maybe (just maybe) all of the professionals who post on this forum about how rubbish Ideal boilers are wrong, and you alone are right...

 

[Agile]

Dont forget that Ideal are still selling the full range of rebadged Biasi condensing boilers as the Ideal Mini range e.g. C24HE etc.

Potterton/Baxi are majoring on the Performa/105 series! British boilers? No, they are Alpha Ocean 240s !!!

I also hear that the Vaillants are now mostly made/assembled in Italy although I have not found confirmation of that yet.

You should not blame T.........r for closing down the British industries, it was Maggie who started that and T..........r had only contined the good (?) work.

Some of you will have heard that the Peugeot 206 which is made in a very modern plant near Coventry is to be closed next year. My hairdresser thinks thats not because its uneconomic but because there would be too many riots if they closed a plant in France!

Tony

 

[afc017]

In my opinion Worchester Green Stars, are flimsy and the cases are warped and difficult to get on and off. Front cover flap always breaks in about 1 minute. Its also very difficult to remove the burner and the baffles if its inside a kitchen unit. You need a special tool that removes the baffles from the top of boiler from within the heat exchanger. impossible from within a unit.
Baxi solo's are simply to fix and easy to service.