"ChrisJ" wrote in message
...
We had our old boiler exchanged for a combi and its great having hot
water
whenever you want it and our gas bills have reduced. However the problem
I
find is that if I just want to wash my hands or rinse a cup out I have to
run the water for about 30 seconds to a minute before warm water comes
through. I'm not sure how our washing machine copes. Is it just our
boiler? None of the pipe runs are particularly long. Once the hot water
is
through its great.

Anyway..

We are about to move to a house where they have a normal boiler that we
would like to replace so that we can remove the header tank in order to
enable us to convert the loft more easily, free up space in a cupboard
where
the hot water storage tank is and so we can have instant hot water again.
However it would be nice to have 'instant' hot water rather than having
to
run so much cold water away. Is there a way to do this? Is it possible
to
fit a small hot water storage tank that would suffice for hand washing/
rinsing cups etc that is topped up by the combi?

ChrisJ


In some of the older combis there was a switchable preheat facility which
allowed the user to control keping a small store of water hot for immediate
hot flow on demand. More modern simple ones have largely lost this facility
in the name of progress and the drift towards plate type heat exchangers
rather than small calorifiers within the casing of the boiler.
You could select a current combi which does keep a store of hot water or
stick with a storage system. Can you find room for your extension by
perhaps relocating the tank and cylinder or changing to an unvented
cylinder whcih would at least "lose" the storage tank. With a cylinder of
either type you can have an immersion heater as backup in the event of
boiler breakdown.

The delay is due to the physical limitations of the boiler going through
its ignition and proving sequence before actually lighting the fire so to
speak. One of my customers was extremely ****ed off when he moved away into
a new house with a Sime "ordinary" combi which took about 40 seconds to
deliver hot water each time from cold and his water bills suddenly were
higher than his gas bills