I'm hoping someone can lead me in the right direction before I waste an engineers time quoting for a central heating system that I might not go for.
Property Details
I have a largish 1800sq ft 4 bed house with bathroom and separate shower room, downstairs cloakroom, gas cooker, utility room with "modernish" cold feed appliances.
CH System
I have a conventional central heating system with tanks in the loft, airing cupboard with copper cyclinder, floor mounted 25kw Thorn EMI boiler all about 20 years old.
Problem
The boiler is working fine and it's not gone wrong so far, but it looks an eyesore and the tanks in the loft make lots of noise filling (wakes the family up), I suspect the cyclinder is heavily scaled as we live in a hard water area and the whole system is probably very inefficient. Also, we're planning to do some kitchen refurbishment so this is the ideal time for a replacement.
In truth, I like the idea of swapping to a sealed system with condensing combi boiler because we mainly shower and share baths and could make use of the extra airing cupboard and loft space, but is this really a good idea and am I being realistic? Do people normally do this sort of thing?
My main concern is that I spend £3k on a new installation and it doesn't do the job (in terms of delivering enough hot water). Partly, my concerns are based on experience - my aunt had a combi fitted 15 years ago and regretted it. However, I wonder if that's no longer a concern with the modern combi and some of the new storage combis?
I've read about the Vaillant ecoTec plus 937 and Alpha do a similar storage boiler. Also, I've heard that the Worcester Greenstar 37/42CDI is very good.
Can anyone give me some advice to get me on track? Thanks in advance.
Property Details
I have a largish 1800sq ft 4 bed house with bathroom and separate shower room, downstairs cloakroom, gas cooker, utility room with "modernish" cold feed appliances.
CH System
I have a conventional central heating system with tanks in the loft, airing cupboard with copper cyclinder, floor mounted 25kw Thorn EMI boiler all about 20 years old.
Problem
The boiler is working fine and it's not gone wrong so far, but it looks an eyesore and the tanks in the loft make lots of noise filling (wakes the family up), I suspect the cyclinder is heavily scaled as we live in a hard water area and the whole system is probably very inefficient. Also, we're planning to do some kitchen refurbishment so this is the ideal time for a replacement.
In truth, I like the idea of swapping to a sealed system with condensing combi boiler because we mainly shower and share baths and could make use of the extra airing cupboard and loft space, but is this really a good idea and am I being realistic? Do people normally do this sort of thing?
My main concern is that I spend £3k on a new installation and it doesn't do the job (in terms of delivering enough hot water). Partly, my concerns are based on experience - my aunt had a combi fitted 15 years ago and regretted it. However, I wonder if that's no longer a concern with the modern combi and some of the new storage combis?
I've read about the Vaillant ecoTec plus 937 and Alpha do a similar storage boiler. Also, I've heard that the Worcester Greenstar 37/42CDI is very good.
Can anyone give me some advice to get me on track? Thanks in advance.