Hey, I know this probably comes up fairly frequently so I'll try to get to the point!
I recently moved house and have a Baxi Bermuda 401 bbu in the lounge with an old radiant outset fireplace. There are two direct-to-outside vents in the kitchen but with no through vents from the lounge so the boiler has just been certified as "At Risk" after I had a gas safe engineer come out to assess it. I'm having solid external wall insultation fitted in a few weeks so the gas engineer came out as part of the pre-work assessment.
He confirmed what I thought, vents need to be in the lounge and the existing vents are inadequate and not up to regulations.
I signed a disclaimer to keep the boiler on for now as the work for the vents will be done in a few weeks when work starts on re-rendering the house. Existing vents aren't ideal but the kitchen door is jammed open with a doorstop and I've got two carbon monoxide meters on the go in the meantime. It's too cold to have to live with no heating/hot water for 2 weeks but I'll be keeping a close eye on the detectors!
The chap that came out will be the one fitting the new vents. He said that he'll block up the kitchen ones and put the new ones in the lounge. However, he was pretty adamant that despite the draught concerns there is absolutely no option regarding cowls/baffles for the vents and they must be direct through. The ones I have in the kitchen are literally holes straight to the outside with a bit of mesh over them so when it's windy I get a gale in the kitchen and I can see straight outside. I also get slugs and beetles coming in
I know this is a common complaint and I'm sure he's right that there's no solution but I just wanted to be absolutely certain before the work commences as I'd rather look into this before he starts cutting holes in the wall. Another engineer suggested that Stadium Black Hole vents might be an option but having looked on the website it did state that they may not meet regulations and tests would have to be done after they're fitted to ensure proper flow.
Any advice much appreciated. I know the importance of vents and I certainly don't want to die but if there are any safe regulation-friendly options out there to reduce draughts I'd love to know about them. My fire and bbu are old so the overall kW output is pretty high so the vents are going to have to be pretty large. BBU is 11.70kW max output and I'd guess the fire is somewhere around 6kW too.
Thanks in advance
Sarah
I recently moved house and have a Baxi Bermuda 401 bbu in the lounge with an old radiant outset fireplace. There are two direct-to-outside vents in the kitchen but with no through vents from the lounge so the boiler has just been certified as "At Risk" after I had a gas safe engineer come out to assess it. I'm having solid external wall insultation fitted in a few weeks so the gas engineer came out as part of the pre-work assessment.
He confirmed what I thought, vents need to be in the lounge and the existing vents are inadequate and not up to regulations.
I signed a disclaimer to keep the boiler on for now as the work for the vents will be done in a few weeks when work starts on re-rendering the house. Existing vents aren't ideal but the kitchen door is jammed open with a doorstop and I've got two carbon monoxide meters on the go in the meantime. It's too cold to have to live with no heating/hot water for 2 weeks but I'll be keeping a close eye on the detectors!
The chap that came out will be the one fitting the new vents. He said that he'll block up the kitchen ones and put the new ones in the lounge. However, he was pretty adamant that despite the draught concerns there is absolutely no option regarding cowls/baffles for the vents and they must be direct through. The ones I have in the kitchen are literally holes straight to the outside with a bit of mesh over them so when it's windy I get a gale in the kitchen and I can see straight outside. I also get slugs and beetles coming in
I know this is a common complaint and I'm sure he's right that there's no solution but I just wanted to be absolutely certain before the work commences as I'd rather look into this before he starts cutting holes in the wall. Another engineer suggested that Stadium Black Hole vents might be an option but having looked on the website it did state that they may not meet regulations and tests would have to be done after they're fitted to ensure proper flow.
Any advice much appreciated. I know the importance of vents and I certainly don't want to die but if there are any safe regulation-friendly options out there to reduce draughts I'd love to know about them. My fire and bbu are old so the overall kW output is pretty high so the vents are going to have to be pretty large. BBU is 11.70kW max output and I'd guess the fire is somewhere around 6kW too.
Thanks in advance
Sarah
