New boiler time!

[Bailes1992]

So we have a 25 year old wall mounted Baxi.

About 3 weeks ago we started smelling gas in the house. We got a British Gas out who loacted the leak and isolated the boiler.

My parents have used the same gas fitter for years. He maintained their old Baxi for 10 years and recently fitted two combi's for them (one in their home and one in their rental home). They've never had any issue with his work and has always been very well priced.

I got this gas fitter out about 2 weeks ago who looked at what needed replacing and came round Thursday who replaced the gas pipe that had broken, along with some other seals, an ignitor, a new thermocouple and a few other bits and bobs.
He pressure tested the gas, tested to make sure there was no gas leaking from the boiler and then tested for carbon monoixde.
Unfortunately after 15 minutes of the boiler being fired up the central heating pump died. Due to the poor state of repair of our hot water cylinder the pump can't be replaced without damage to the tank. I arranged for him to come round Monday and replace the tank and CH pump.

Tonight I went to open the cupboard with the boiler in and it absolutely stunk of gas. I isolated the gas to the boiler to ensure no harm and aired it out.

Unfortunatley my other half has decided she doesn't trust this gas fitted who my parents have used for years and no longer trusts the boiler.

So now I have no other option other than ripping it all out and replacing it.

I am considering going all electric as I can do all the work myself. Install a standard CH/HW controller and a standard room stat to control a few relays running panel heaters in each room and an immersion. Am I mad?
I'm going to add up all the costs tonight, I suspect it will be around the £1000 mark. I also suspect it will be a damn sight more expensive to run!

So after I had a bit of argument with the other half about it all, I picked up a tub of gloss to put it in the shed and dropped the f*cking thing! Pictures to follow.

[PeterN]

If your going to be running on full price electricity its going to be expensive, its around 15p per Kwh which I think you will find is a lot dearer than gas. If you have room for a large storage tank you can go down the off peak storage route, you could then use your existing radiators.

Peter

[Bailes1992]

Bare in mind that my current boiler was 63% efficient when it came out the factory there may be little difference in terms of costs. I need to sit down and work it out.
Also it will be about £1000 less to install and I can install and maintain it myself.

I'm not interested in storage heaters. I don't like warming them up incase the house needs heating.

[rwb]

What's the deal with hot water tanks these days? Aren't they nearly as evil as diesel engines? I thought that combination boilers were going to save us all.

Similarly, what's the deal with electric boilers?

Would removing gas central heating affect the value of your house? (I certainly wouldn't look twice if someone had installed something strange.)

[PeterN]

According to a government web site electricity is 15.5p perk Kwh and gas 4.8p er Kwh, even if your boiler was only 50% efficient it would still only work out to 9.6p per kw. I have a combination of a multifuel stove, and oil fired rayburn and a small heat pump. The stove is cheapest to run as I have quite a few trees although I use anthracite when its very cold. The Rayburn comes somewhere around the price of off peak electricity, the heat pump is cheapest at night on off peak although not so much during the day especially if its very cold.

I agree with your thoughts on storage heaters unless the house is occupied all day, we had them when we first moved into this house 45 years ago and the place was only warm for a few hours in the morning but it is a very old stone house with no cavity and very little insulation. The heating I prefer is without doubt the stove, it can produce a lot of heat quickly when the weather is very cold and you can sit in font of it and get warm.

If we had mains gas I would use it but the nearest supply is about three miles away.

Peter

[Bailes1992]

10p more per KW hour difference?
So the heating would have to be on for 10,000 hours before gas heating would be cheaper than electric.

[PeterN]

Bear in mind that you will be using considerably more than 1kwh.

[Bailes1992]

Yeah. I meant 10,000kwh.
Just a quick calculation and I think my house would require 6.5kwh to heat it.
May look into underfloor heating for downstairs.

[PeterN]

That's about the most efficient way of heating.

[Bailes1992]

Viesmann 10p series 35kw combi being fitted tommorow.

[lozz]

Combi's are not to bad once you get used to them.

The swap out is a mare, with ours they had to rip a lot of the old pipework out.
Gas pipe is on 15mm on old system's so that had to come out too adding more ££s to the cost.

[Welly]

Viesmann are very good boilers and Combi's are a lot better than they used to be. The only trouble you used to get with combi's was that they suffered from poor flow if another tap was opened in the house, hopefully they're better now.

Personally I prefer a Hot Water Cylinder full of hot hater, ours is a modern pre-insulated one and it takes our gas boiler only a few minutes to top it up (even with two power showers running) it's a big cylinder with a 28mm outlet. With 2 x Women in the house I must have hot water OR ELSE.

[Bailes1992]

So the gas fitter has come out and a seal on the gas valve had failed.
Looking around the £800 mark to fix what we have or £1600 to install a new boiler. New boiler it is!

[steve_earwig]

800 quid to change a seal? Is it a Mercedes boiler?

[highlander]

£0.49 for the seal
£799.51 for labour