On 08/12/2010 10:05, Ret. wrote:
BartC wrote:
"Ret." wrote in message
...


TBH, a few years ago and I was arguing that I wouldn't touch a combi
with a barge-pole. The people I knew who had one never ceased
complaining about the lukewarm water from the hot tap - and the fact
that it took two hours to fill a bath.

The cost saving has been significant for us and, as our old boiler
was on its last legs anyway - the replacement cost was necessary.

There are other benefits as well. With our old boiler, first thing
in the morning when the timer kicked in, the heat produced would be
divided between heating the water in the tank and heating the water
in the radiators. With our combi, all the heat goes to the radiators
and so the house heats up a lot faster for when we get out of bed.
We also have piping hot water whenever we want it - and it never
runs out! If we have guests we can all have a shower or bath one
after the other without the water starting to run cold. I'm a
complete convert!

Except when the hot water is working, the heating is off (depending
on the boiler).

Indeed - but for how long do you have a hot tap running? The effect upon
the house heating is minimal in practice - particularly if your house,
like mine, is well insulated.


I haven't had much luck with combi boilers. I inherited an old one
when I bought a house, which blew up, then over the course of nine
years installed *two* new combis, always going wrong (mostly due to
sludge in the system), and spending a fortune on successive 'CH
engineers' who hadn't a clue what they were doing.

All combi boiler manufacturers insist on a system flush before their
boilers are installed. Very few installers will actually do it unless
you are standing over them and pointing out that they haven't done it
(which happened in my case). It takes time to run the system with a
flushing agent in it for sufficiently long period to ensure most of the
sludge is circulating and washed out. All they want to do is get your
new boiler in and get on to the next job.

I've been renting recently and have an average of one problem a year,
fortunately the owner took care of it.

I wish I just had one of those back boilers, with gravity fed hot
water, and an unpressurised CH system that is so easy (and less
dangerous) to mess about with. Those will work for decades. There is
no "PCB" that will suddenly decide the boiler shouldn't operate. Or
one of those wall-mounted hot water boilers: open a hot water tap,
and the gas ignites and gives you hot water *every time*; if there is
a gas and water supply (and the pilot is lit), it will work. No
electronics.

But nowhere near as efficient, or as cheap to run, as a modern, good
quality, combi!



Yup, especially the condensing types.

--
Bod