Old boiler !

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Markjay has a boiler going cheap in the classifieds.
May be cost effective.

I do indeed :)

Thank you Ted.
 
Well your old boiler is a balanced flu boiler floor mounted,they do go on for ever as you have found out,it is a good idea to see if you can pick up the spares on line,to keep it running until you move the boiler location,and renew it it.
 
Yes, I went through the check list a number of years ago and I thought I could beat the system as the boiler location was central in the house. But a condensate sump & pump defeated me, I couldn't score enough points to avoid fitting a condensing boiler. In the end, I kept the old boiler. It wasn't exactly old but was a combi fitted for the previous house owner and was undersized for our needs. I had the domestic water heating side disconnected, added a cylinder on a separate motorised valve and the boiler coped.
 
Where possible. There are exceptions.

Do you have any pointers, references etc to allowable exceptions?

I expect to face a boiler (oil) replacement in the next couple of years and simply have no access to condensate drainage without digging up the drive and installing new drains. That would probably also involve relocating the incoming underground electricity main and 3 outgoing electricity cables.
 
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Repair it if you can find the parts in till you do the refurb. Will tell you this, you will never find a modern boiler that will last as long. Most wall mount combi's will do about 15 years if maintained well.
 
Railwayman said:
Repair it if you can find the parts in till you do the refurb. Will tell you this, you will never find a modern boiler that will last as long. Most wall mount combi's will do about 15 years if maintained well.
We've got a wall mounted boiler here, fitted about 18 years ago. Never been serviced and runs like clockwork.
 
Do you have any pointers, references etc to allowable exceptions?

I expect to face a boiler (oil) replacement in the next couple of years and simply have no access to condensate drainage without digging up the drive and installing new drains. That would probably also involve relocating the incoming underground electricity main and 3 outgoing electricity cables.
you can install a special plastic soak away to take the condensate which is installed surrounded by calcium carbonate chips about the size of rough gravel, this was done with my new oil system boiler and it got certified by a registered oil heating engineer
 
We've got a wall mounted boiler here, fitted about 18 years ago. Never been serviced and runs like clockwork.


Never service your Paslode,,,,, now your boiler??? Yikes, call yourself a plumber?

Bad on you Darrell. :ban:


:D
 
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Folks. Thanks for the helpful comments. The part search continues but it's looking like it's going to be full system replacement.

Balls.

Ah well, looks like I will have to pony up and have the disruption earlier then initially thought.

Now the complicated task of what spec system to use.
 
Do you have any pointers, references etc to allowable exceptions?

I expect to face a boiler (oil) replacement in the next couple of years and simply have no access to condensate drainage without digging up the drive and installing new drains. That would probably also involve relocating the incoming underground electricity main and 3 outgoing electricity cables.

local council building regulations dept will have a checklist which you can work through. It's a point scoring list and you have to get over or under (I can't remember which) a certain score to avoid having a condensing boiler
 
Well there are lots of different ideas about new boilers,the very best ones are very efficient,just about the only reason to keep the water tank in the loft and a hot water tank in a airing cupboard is if you have solar panels,these will heat the hot water tank and so save a fortune on electricity,for most people extending of changing the layout of their home a condensing boiler is the best option,I fitted mine in the airing cupboard ,with the flue going straight up through the loft space and roof,the drain was run via its own 40mm pipe through the wall of the bathroom under the bath and out to the drain,always fit a boiler with a stainless heat exchanger and also a magnetic filter to catch any crap running around the system,all boilers are combination boilers but you can get system boilers if you want to keep the hot water tank or combi's if you want to remove the tanks,as for make Baxi and,Vaillant are good makes,it helps if you have soft water in your area as limescale is death to these new boilers so a stainless steel heat exchanger is needed to help cut corrosion,plus a limescale filter if you are in a hard water area.
 
System boilers are great if you have more than one bathroom and do want really hot water with good pressure no matter how many taps you are running. Bit more expensive and you need space for pressurised tank which will also give you an immersion heater so in the summer you can turn the boiler off ( or great if system breaks down. No more boiler firing up for a few litres of hot water, have found our new oil system boiler very economical to run.
 
Do you have any pointers, references etc to allowable exceptions?

I expect to face a boiler (oil) replacement in the next couple of years and simply have no access to condensate drainage without digging up the drive and installing new drains. That would probably also involve relocating the incoming underground electricity main and 3 outgoing electricity cables.

The condensate drainage is the least problem you will encounter,if you are fitting a combi boiler then the waste water can use the u bend on the bath,as I have posted my boiler went into the old airing cupboard,I used a washing machine waste fitting to accept the condensate,I also fitted the washing machine in the same place so removing it from the kitchen,another way to remove condensate water from the boiler is to run it into a surface water downpipe not ideal but legal you would need to insulate the pipe because of frost in the winter.
 
System boilers are great if you have more than one bathroom and do want really hot water with good pressure no matter how many taps you are running.

I think there is a 'diesel is as refined as petrol' situation with HW heating in modern homes.

People are used to diesel so many don't realise how unrefined the engines still are relative to a smooth petrol engine. They've lost the ability to compare.

Same with combi boilers in 4 and 5 bed homes with multiple bathrooms. People accept lower HW flow rates because they are now the norm.
 
On the subject of water heating, when we replaced our 29 year old boiler last year, I recall a conversation with the installing engineer on the subject. In a sort of flash of comprehension I said to him 'so we should base the temperature of the water on whichever is the most pleasant of the bath water temperature and the shower temperature since our washing machine and dishwasher are cold feed in any case'? He said yes, you are striving for a temperature which allows either the bath water to fill on the hot tap with little addition of cold or the shower ditto. So we turned the water temp down to 35 and use less energy now heating the water only to cool it. Just putting this out there...we have no need of really hot water.
 
So we turned the water temp down to 35 and use less energy now heating the water only to cool it. Just putting this out there...we have no need of really hot water.

It's not like that.

If you take the hot water at 45 instead of 35 and mix it with cold water you take less hot water - but at a higher temperature. In a perfect system the energy used is *the same* to achieve a given temperature either at the mixer outlet or in the bath or sink.

(Now there will notionally be slightly higher losses at 45 vs 35 through the pipes. The system isn't going to be perfect. But if you fill a bath more slowly at a lower temperature then you lose more energy while filling it as well. Again the system isn't going to be perfect.)

Waste energy is normally waste heat. In winter we heat our houses. The waste heat heats .... our houses. So for much of they year it's not really waste. The fuss about incandescent bulbs misses this point entirely. We use them most .... in winter with longer nights and dark evenings and being indoors because it's cold outside. So if you heat your house using electricity then replace all your inefficient incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs then you're - in principal at least - simply transfering the energy use from the bulbs where you 'save' to the heating which will have to make up the difference.
 
Very interesting! And I completely understand. Thanks for that!
 
On the subject of water heating, when we replaced our 29 year old boiler last year, I recall a conversation with the installing engineer on the subject. In a sort of flash of comprehension I said to him 'so we should base the temperature of the water on whichever is the most pleasant of the bath water temperature and the shower temperature since our washing machine and dishwasher are cold feed in any case'? He said yes, you are striving for a temperature which allows either the bath water to fill on the hot tap with little addition of cold or the shower ditto. So we turned the water temp down to 35 and use less energy now heating the water only to cool it. Just putting this out there...we have no need of really hot water.

Is that from a combi boiler or is it water stored at that temperature in a cylinder?
If it is the latter you could have legionellas problems.
 
If your water is being heated in a hot water cylinder, then it pays to set the stat on the immersion heater at 40/45degrees, the thermostat will switch off the power at that, and you will save money, if the stat is set too high, not only will it be more expensive to heat to the set temp, from 50 degrees and above the heater will produce lime scale, become less efficient and eventually need replacing. The hot water stat on the side of the tank 2/3rds down from the top should also be turned back to no more than 40, this will save gas bills from the boiler getting too high also . The problem with most gas fired combi and condensing boilers, is that the hot water temperature is factory set and cannot be adjusted, though the gas flame does modulate which helps, turning the boiler heating stat down a bit as well as the room stat, and fitting thermostatic Rad valves also helps to keep running cost down. Servicing gas fired boilers and checking gas burner, and inlet pressures should not be avoided, just saying, Darrel! :D
 
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