"VisionSet" wrote in message
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"VisionSet" wrote in message
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I'm about to start the last major upheaval in my house.
Replaceing the ancient back-boiler.
...

I'll add a little more detail maybe you two can agree on something ;-)

House is 3-bed semi. 1 bathroom/toilet (ie one room). 6 rads + 1 teeny
one.

So the upshot is that nowadays combis are worth considering?
I'm think that when I had a look 6 years back that wasn't so much the
case.

I am going to do all the work myself though get a corgi chap in for final
gas hook up to maintain boiler guarantee - that is the case is it not?

mains flow is 19.8 l/min - I guess that is okay.

That is quite low. and just about acceptable for a low flowrate combi. Look
at getting the mains from the road updated.

One issue that concerns me is reliability of a combi - my back boiler gets
next to no service and is 30 years old - glowworm model I'm finding it
excellent value! okay so it isn't quite the efficient boiler of today.
Have
combis got more reliable of late?

In general they were never unreliable. Some models were crap, but so are
some cars, washing machines, etc.

If I put the boiler under the stairs
(prefered location) available dims are
1240mm high x 770mm wide (width better
alot less) depth slim as possible but
no actual restriction.

Hollow floors eases plumbing. All existing pipework is copper. 15mm
throughout except 22mm joins upstairs to downstairs rads. Shower is
gravity
fed from same loft tank with very little head of water - perhaps 3ft max
shower head tank water level (full). Had a just tollerable dribble for
too
long now :-( With a Trevie ceramic mixer valve.

There is the usual heating top up tank - Do any new real candidate systems
still need this?

Can I put the whole shooting match in the loft?

Yep.

Loft is too low for a full loft conversion so I might as well use it for
something - I think the one thing that I don't like about that my
perception
of heat waste from the cylinder and boiler - I kind of liked the idea of
putting them somewhere I would benefit from any inefficiencies. However I
rather suspect these days those innefficiencies may well be negligble - or
at least unbenefittable from.

If it is ill advised to put the whole lot in the loft - which bits are a
good idea to put up there? House is 1930's with the hefty purlins and
very
low since the rafter line is part in 1st floor. So height of any
apparatus
is a factor.

Andy - do you see away to ditch the tanks without going combi? Is that
pressurised system?

A heat bank. Look at a Potterton Powermax (boiler and cylinder all in one
box). It can go in the loft.

An Alpha CB50 combi will be fine for you. 19 litres/min and drops to 11
litres/min when internal store exhausted. You will fill a bath reasonably
quickly and have good showers.

I need to do some reading definitions
of these systems - any links?

http://www.heatweb.com Good explanation.

Look at my recent post, 20/9/2004 on combi boiler explanations.