General Chat

my mum recently had a new boiler fitted by british gas. She has a radiator in her bathroom that does not have a thermostat and she still has her airing cupboard. I do believe that you are supposed to have a condenser boiler fitted now though. But I should think Chris would know more than I.

Will add these details in case they are any good to anyone regarding financial help. WARM START is firm that helps. need to earning £15,000 or less or on tax creadit, income support etc. not quite sure on all details as not done it myself, it was friend. the grant available is up to £2,500 then apply to local council for a top up grant, this is free of charge but they must see the letter from warm start before they pay out rest of money due obviously. hope this info is of some use to someone. And hope u get a good plumber!!

Debs Doesn't a person have to be over 60 to get the help from WARMSTART as my sil had new central heating/Boiler in a couple of years ago and she was told the people to get the help have to be over 60. Suexxx

a combi condensing boiler is what you need-as long as the water presssure is good enough for it-saves having to have a tank and all the other stuff-make sure you DONT use Brish Gas....they installed a 600 pond boiler made by Ideal and charged £3k for it...just make sure the engineer is corgi registered that all....

Hi Marion We wanted a combi boiler 2 years ago we had 3 different men come to weigh the job up but all declined to do it The fourth was a bit if a conman and wanted £1440 before he even started the job The reason being if we had a combi boiler it would a have to be on an outside wall , this would mean that some ot the cupboards would have to be removed and all the other work removing the old boiler and cylinder They were only interested in doing the work if it could have been a straight swop We were also told that yes we could have a replacment conventional boiler but the goverment preferred combi's We have still got our old boiler which the gas board had been saying for years when they came to do the annual checkup that it needed replacing because they couldn't get parts etc One day my OH decided to have at look at the boiler and found that the regulator had been altered he changed it to the what it said in the handbook and it's worked fine ever since He was a plumber but can't put in a new boiler because he is not Corgi registered This really annoys him because he spent 5 years as an apprentice and these days they do a short NVQ course plus a 2day Corgi course and they are a Plumber Bren

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions and especially Daphne and her son Chris who has proved very useful. Thanks also to Debs for putting up those warm start details. It all seems to make sense now and it’s amazing how things have changed and also how you don’t think of all the ramifications of doing something. In case anyone is interested, we have settled on a Glow-worm Flexicom 18sx high efficiency system boiler and, having googled it, it sounds quite good and reliable. The cylinder we are having is something called a high recovery indirect pre-foam lagged hot water cylinder. The expansion tank we have will be removed, we are keeping the radiator in the bathroom but because we will be able to turn off all the other radiators individually we can just keep this one on if we want to in the summer. The system has to be power flushed as well and of course there will be various bits of making good as well as some new Pipework etc. I am so pleased that I plucked up courage to start this thread and never thought I would get so interested in central heating. It just proves there’s always something new to learn. Thank you everyone for your time and trouble. Marion PS Daphne will pm you a bit later.

I am facing this problem at the moment - new boiler needed, cannot go in the kitchen where it was before because the vent is too close to a wall, cost is now astronomical. Everyone keeps telling me the new boilers are more efficient and 'you will see considerable savings in your gas bills'. But! - my gas bill only amounts to £12 per month with the old boiler.(And that includes a gas cooker). I am going to have to live an awfully long time before I save the £4K or so that I have been quoted. OC