On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:42:07 -0000, Triffid wrote:

Every day you are paying out good money to heat up a whole tank of hot
water - that you may never use.

Not if it's well insulated. You've only got to supply enough heat to
replace that lost by using hot water or through convection/conduction.

Prior to switching I was of the 'don't touch a combi with a barge-pole'
school of thought. I was persuaded by the argument that modern
condensing combis are a dramatic improvement on the earlier efforts.

I'm all for having a condensing boiler, but a combi doesn't suit our
situation. We have *three* showers, and it's not unusual for two (if not
all three) to be in use at the same time. Our large hot water cylinder
can cope with that; I don't think a combi would.

It also happens that the cylinder is quite near the bathrooms, so the
showers run hot almost immediately. There's a long pipe run from the
boiler, so with a combi we'd be waiting ages and wasting water at the same
time.

We have had the combi for three years now and have no regrets. I was
able to remove all the plumbing and tanks from the loft.

We don't have any tanks in the loft either - it's all directly off the
mains (so good pressure for showers without needing a pump).

So I agree about not having open tanks, not requiring pumps, and using a
modern efficient condensing boiler. But none of that necessarily implies
a combi: we get all those advantages from our System Boiler and a large,
well insulated, hot water cylinder.

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/