On Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:27:51 +0000, David WE Roberts wrote:

snip

Thanks for all the responses so far.

Looking through them, I can see I left out an important part of the
explanation.

There is a problem about siting the boiler.

All the drainage is at the back of the house.
So is the kitchen, bathroom, toilet.
This is where the water main comes up through the floor.

I can't put the boiler at the front of the house as there is not much wall
which is not lounge window or front door.
In the hall it would block the lounge door or the stairs.
In the lounge it would be an eyesore.
I would also have to run the pipes up the wall and through the upstairs
floor to get to the kitchen and bathroom at the back.

I can't put the boiler on the LHS (looking from the front) as it is a semi
and it might make my neighbour's lounge cloudy.

I cant put the boiler on the ground floor RHS as I have an integral garage
which runs the full length of the house, and links to the old garage at
the rear of the house.

I can't (I think) put the boiler in the garage as it runs right up to the
boundary and the vent would therefore be into the neighbour's property.
Perhaps I could vent vertically through the flat roof?
Another possibility is the downstairs toilet, which is at the back of the
garage where it reaches beyond the back of the kitchen and has some
outside wall space. Not a massive amount of floor space, though. Cold and
damp in the winter.

The only obvious place on the ground floor is in the kitchen, where I have
about 1 metre of outside wall to the right of the window.
However I don't have that much room in the kitchen and I was planning to
hang storage cupboards there.

Similar problems upstairs.
No back wall space obvious ( although it could perhaps go in the toilet
above the low level cistern). It would have to be a slim as the cistern,
though.

No side wall space (all stairs, window, and smallest upstairs bedroom to
the front).

My favoured place would be in the loft at the gable end.
Loads of unused space, close to bathroom and toilet, directly above the
kitchen, and I can use the gable end or the roof for a vent.

Closest suggestion so far is Jeff's Alpha CD50.
Any known problem,s with this unit, or good alternatives (Jeff, close your
eyes at this point since you have already bought one and don't really want
to know)?

Cheers

Dave R