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Tan

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Hi

Further to my previous posts regards the problems with my central heating, I had a plumber come to look at the boiler this evening and I have been told that we need to change the boiler.

Now for my next question, how much should this cost?

I have been quoted £3100 to remove the old back boiler and to install a new boiler into the loft. We have looked for other locations and unfortunatley the loft is the only option.

Does this price seam right?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Tan
 
hard to say without knowing amount of work to repipe but get 4 or 5 quotes from local reputable firms. plumbers havn't got as much work on as they had 6 months ago
 
Lots of work relocating a boiler. Personally, I would try to find another location within the main body of the house if at all possible. Seems a waste to heat the loft space.
It would probably be cheaper to have the work done in the summer when plumbers are less in demand than in the middle of winter.
If you allocate £1000 for materials, that leaves about £2000 for labour. Ask him how long the work will take and by using simple maths you can gestimate his hourly rate.
I would say, without knowing all the details, like house size, boiler type or size etc, that its about right.
 
As the heating and hot water are not working properly, we have to have the work done now unfortunatley.

There is no available space in any other room in the house, so the loft is really the only option.

The house is a 3 bedroom end of terrace with 8 radiators, the next decision is what type of boiler to have Combi or Regular? We have two bathrooms if that makes any difference.
 
Lots of work relocating a boiler. Personally, I would try to find another location within the main body of the house if at all possible. Seems a waste to heat the loft space.
Locating consensing boilers can be troublesome, because of the pluming from the flue. Building regs say that a condensing flue cannot be within 2.1m of a boundary. Also the manufacturers instructions generally reflect the building regs regarding location. This can cause some difficulties replacing an existing boiler - and although building regs don't apply to replacement it doesn't put you in good stead if your neighbour complains that the plume is condensing on the side of his house, windows (especially when open) or their person as we walks down the side of the house.

We have a 25 year old boiler that runs fine and is located on the side of the house, with a 1m path to the fence (and neighbours 1m wide path on the other side). When we have to replace with a condensing boiler the only real option is upstairs in the airing cupboard or the loft. Getting the gas supply there will be a real pain, so at present I'm keeping the old boilder going as long as possible, given that all it is a gas valve, a heat exchanger and a big flame I'm hoping it will keep going for a while yet.

Tan - I haven't been there for a while - buy you might want to try posting on www.diynot.com. There are a lot of heating engineers who post there and they may be able to advise regarding a suitable replacement in the current location (no disrespect to the plumbers/heating engineers here meant, there are just more of them there).
 
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Tan.
In exceptional circumstances you don't have to fit a condensing boiler. If there genuinely is no reasonable place to mount it then that would apply, although a back boiler drawing from the room is never going to be efficent due to drawing cold air into the room.

A condensing boiler can be mounted within 2m of an opposing wall if an angled flue is fitted so the vapour doesn't emit straight out.

I understand the weather has become colder but fail to see how the boiler is suddenly terminaly ill when it was working recently. I'm sure your boiler has a controls issue.
The only thing that will suddenly write off a boiler is if the heat exchanger corrodes through.
 
Me too. If the boiler is actually working, albeit under performing or some control has been lost, then I'd want a couple of other opinions. That said, and not knowing or seeing your boiler I'm guessing that its an oldish GlowWorm Galaxy or similar.

Nothing wrong with putting a boiler in the loft but, to be right, permanent lighting, boarding, walkways, and believe it or not grab rails, should be installed but all of those very rarely are.

The pluming effect can be negated by going through the roof with a specially designed vertical flue terminal. The terminal itself costs a little more but that is offset by not having to buy the usual through the back wall type of terminal. Going this way all the pluming is at high level.

Boiler type / size? Strictly speaking you dont have to install a condensing boiler if there are, as Dieselman pointed out, sound technical reasons why one cannot be installed. In these cases the installer should fill out an "Exception Report" which is left with the customer. That said, condensers are extremely clever things and are now well developed technically

I would say a minimum of 35 Kw if you are running two bathrooms from it. You wont notice any difference in temperature, unless you adjust it at the boiler controls, but its the flow rate/s that you are after, ie litres per minute, and if you opt for something like 28 Kw or 30 Kw then you may struggle to have more than two taps running at once. Dont worry to much about the boiler being over-gunned heating wise for the size of your house because boilers these days are self regulating in the main and they adjust their outputs to heating automatically and from there they modulate depending on demand.

Price? Hard to say without knowing the local market / merchants but what you tend to find is the leap from a 30 Kw to 35 Kw and then to say 40 Kw is not linear. The 30 to 35 Kw market is quite cut throat because that is the bread and butter side of things but to give you an idea, a Worcester Bosch CDI 42 (42 Kw condenser) can be had in Mirfield West Yorks for £1150 including rear wall flue excluding clock. A 30 Kw, non headline make, from B&Q can be had for around £400. Believe me, the Worcester is one heck of a boiler and the DHW flow rate is remarkable but you will probably be better with the CDI 35, the 42 would work but is more suited to 4/5 bedrooms 2/3 bath or shower rooms.

HTH.
Portzy.
 
£3100 sounds a bit OTT to me.

Last year I had a completely new system installed, 5 rads, Potterton Gold 28HE condensing boiler. I bought the boiler for £800 and the rads for £500. I hung the radiators beforehand and 2 guys installed the whole lot including gas connection and all copper work to the rads in 1 day!

This was done buy a local corgi registered company for £500.

I'm not sure how much your boiler would be, but it might be worth buying it yourself and getting a quote for an installer to set it up for you.

Good luck.

PS. I bought the bits online from http://www.boilers2go.co.uk
 
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£3,100 does not seem to be unrealistic but get alternative quotes...I would expect quotes between £2,500 & £3,500. I have recently gone through the same process myself on behalf of a friend.

By the way, the 2.5m distance refers to walls facing boundaries.....if the flue is parallel to the boundary, I think that the permitted distance is 600mm.
 
Last February, British Gas charged me around £3,000 for a replacement boiler - a compact Worcester-Bosch 'Greenstar Ri'.

It is an excellent boiler - but while the cost of the boiler itself was less than £1,000 one seems to have little choice but to be 'fleeced' by qualified CORGI installers.
 
IMHO, 3k is not far off the mark for a Premium condensing boiler re-situated in Loftspace.
My advice would be Remeha Avanta System Boiler or Avanta Plus Combi.
Excellent Boilers, Built to last, Simple to Repair and onboard Diagnostics.

Remember your new Boiler will be "A Rated" you will have your money back in under 100 years.

Good Luck
Joe
(It has already been mentioned you should allow Money to prepare loft with fixed ladder, boarding, Lighting as required, The days of entering lofts through step ladders and walking on joists to service a Boiler are over)
 
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Hi all,

Thanks for all the replies, I had an excellent heating engineer come out this morning and take the boiler apart and gave it a damn good clean. Its all working happily again now.

But as he said and I am inclined to agree, it should be changed soon as I have been advised that this one is in the region of 25 years old.

He is going to give me a quote to replace with a System Boiler.
 
Depending on the size of boiler you require and any additional works to be carried out you shoud expect to pay around £2500 - £3000. Installing the boiler in the loft is actually a good idea, it will save you space and you can have the flue terminating throught the roof. Don worry about heating the roof space as the boiler wont actually give off too much residual heat. I'd reccomend that you replace your boiler with a worcester greenstar system boiler, a 24kw model will be enough for the average house, but best to check with your installer. I work for British Gas and Worcester is in my opinion the only boiler woth installing, you get a 2year manufacturers guarantee as stadard, but some accredited installers can offer a 5 year guarantee! You cant get better than that! Hope this helps.
 
I would get at least 4 quotes just to see.

Putting it in the loft do you still have a control box / thermostate downstairs or somewhere?

Our combi boiler is in the utility room and we have no room thermostatebut do have them on the rads, If however the heating is off and we come home want to switch it on before the timer kicks in I need to go into the utility room and press a button.....if this was in the loft a bit of a pain?


Shows how things have gone up though my first house a three story end terrance with 7 rads was around £3000 for a complete NEW heating system (nothing in the house prior) with boiler !!! that was only in the last 10 yrs...
 
Boiler type / size? Strictly speaking you dont have to install a condensing boiler if there are, as Dieselman pointed out, sound technical reasons why one cannot be installed. In these cases the installer should fill out an "Exception Report" which is left with the customer. That said, condensers are extremely clever things and are now well developed technically

Portzy - have you done many exceptions? I had a look at the forms and scored our house a while back - we fail on basis that the rules consider a bedroom to be an acceptable place to mount a bolier (that or an ugly vertical flue up the side of the house). Therefore unless we can find a engineer who will be liberal with the rules we are forced down the condensing route and have it install a long gas run to the loft, which would involve taking the tiles/felt off the porch roof and floorboards up in one bedroom and the landing (luckily the joists do run the right way).

Our neighbours were in a simialr situation and moved theirs to the loft this summer, but ran the Gas pipe up the corner of a bedroom wall (not acceptable in my book).
 
Portzy - have you done many exceptions? I had a look at the forms and scored our house a while back - we fail on basis that the rules consider a bedroom to be an acceptable place to mount a bolier (that or an ugly vertical flue up the side of the house).

I thought boilers could only be mounted in bedrooms if they can be enclosed inside a cupboard.

Do you really not have enough wall space for a boiler to hang on. They can be smaller than standard upper kitchen cupboards now.

If you're thinking of going for a combi then can't you stick it in the airing cupboard, assuming you have one.?

Why would you need an external flue, either fit an internal one to a better location (within distance constraints) or fit an angled outlet to direct the gasses differently so there is enough space.
 
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Portzy - have you done many exceptions? I had a look at the forms and scored our house a while back - we fail on basis that the rules consider a bedroom to be an acceptable place to mount a bolier (that or an ugly vertical flue up the side of the house). Therefore unless we can find a engineer who will be liberal with the rules we are forced down the condensing route and have it install a long gas run to the loft, which would involve taking the tiles/felt off the porch roof and floorboards up in one bedroom and the landing (luckily the joists do run the right way).

Our neighbours were in a simialr situation and moved theirs to the loft this summer, but ran the Gas pipe up the corner of a bedroom wall (not acceptable in my book).

Just a handfull really, let me explain, in these instances it was the condensate drainaway that was the problem.

I'm in Social Housing, at least nine to five, and we have a good number of high rise blocks. The problem was that all the internal wastes were made from copper to cast iron and being as the condensate is corrosive, we could not take a tapping into the wastes.

You can run gas pipe outside btw, perfectly acceptable;).

Portzy
 
I thought boilers could only be mounted in bedrooms if they can be enclosed inside a cupboard. If you're thinking of going for a combi then can't you stick it in the airing cupboard, assuming you have one.?

They dont have to be boxed in but they can be troublesome from a noise point of view. Yes, the cylinder cupboard is a popular place & mines in there, all the services are handy except the gas and again in my case the meter was directly below the cupboard under the stairs.

Portzy.
 
You can run gas pipe outside btw, perfectly acceptable;).
Like driving a ford you mean. :D
 

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