"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"IMM" writes:
"sro" wrote in message
...

Thanks again - and now the real question,
are condensing boilers unreliable ?

No. They are same as a system boiler except they have a plastic drain
pipe
attached.

Also worth mentioning that they have acid continuously running over
the heat exchanger. Some have stainless steel heat exchangers, whilst
others have aluminium alloy heat exchangers. I would not be surprised
to find a significant difference in the life of these two types.

Installed properly they should both last quite a while. There are plenty of
Ideal aluminium heat exchanger condensers about, and have been around for
many years.

I suspect that a heat exchanger failing in
a condensing boiler more than perhaps
6 years old is not likely to be regarded as an economic
repair.

Depends on price or repair and a new item, as always. Some Ideal heat
exchangers are not that big, so can't be that expensive to a new boiler.
Also new condensing boiler prices are dropping, and soon will be the norm,
so prices will drop further.

So you are in the situation of 15 years ago when 99.9% of boilers were
regular boilers. Some where expensive to change the heat exchangers, other,
mainly the finned copper tube one piece exchangers were cheap and super
simple to do. see:
http://tinyurl.com/r1xg
The heat exchanger just slides out.

A spiral tube heat condensing heat exchanger is a matter of screwing off the
pre-mix burner and the flue cxn.






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