John Rumm wrote:
On 02/02/2011 11:52, The Other Mike wrote:
On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:33:46 -0000, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

There is no "wasted hot water". There are of course the losses in the
pipe
work from the combi to the taps

Or more precisely there is lots more lukewarm, cold, and scalding hot
water wasted in a combi installation and significantly more firings of
the boiler.

A typical scenario:

Every time you turn the tap on you get bugger all hot water, by the
time a combi has fired and water is flowing in the pipe to the tap
then nine times out of ten you'll have thought f*ck it, I can't be
bothered to wait this long for hot water. So you turn the tap off.

This was part of my point about people buying NuTool style combis.

Decent ones have a store of a couple of litres of hot water they keep
sat at temperature, and which they can blend into the water at startup.
Hence they deliver hot water from the get go.

The only time you'll get continuous hot water is running a bath or
taking a shower. The shower will work, but if someone else turns a
tap on it could scald you or leave you covered in ice cold water. The
bath might even fill before the boiler needs an annual service
although you probably have to start filling it the moment the service
person walks out the door.

I'd sooner bathe in a tin bath in the middle of a snow covered field
than ever have a combi.

I would sooner have a hot water system that works properly than a badly
implemented one that doesn't. "Combi = bad / anything else = good" just
shows a lack of experience of decent combis, or badly executed
alternative systems. Combis certainly have limitations, but then again
so do storage systems. Its a case of making a sensible decision about
what is appropriate for the circumstance.


Yebbut if you execute a combi properly (sic!) it ends up taking more
space and costing more than a conventional boiler and tank :-)