In article , Andrew Gabriel
wrote:
There was some agreement
that Keston was probably as good as you'd get now, but ones
which are 3 years old are badly suffering failed heat exchangers.
Then a comment that whilst it used less gas, it had a 1kW fan
in it bull**** alert so it just used more electric instead.
They were very scathing of Ariston's, but I can't remember why.
Also, I presumed from this conversation most gas fitters don't
have a flue gas analyser (and when I spoke to Keston, they also
assumed the gas fitter wouldn't have one). Reading between the
lines, this is why they can't commission or service them.

I'm not sure why heating engineers haven't got flue gas analysers
as according to the Screwfix book they're not that expensive. But
the guy who serviced our church boiler before we switched to a pair
of Kestons two years back hasn't and so far we've followed the
(unwritten) advice of a Keston engineer who said that if the boiler
was working leave well alone: the design is such that all soot etc
gets washed down the condensate drain.

We did have a minor problem with one, traced to a igniter that was
arcing down the ceramic insulator. The replacement cost £25, but
more to the point took a week. Not a problem in our case with twin
boilers but a plumber who had recommended one to a householder
(rather than them requesting it) would be getting a lot of stick
for doing so, this IMHO, the preference for the common names and
models with off the shelf parts.

--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk
Free SEDBUK boiler database browser
http://www.sda.co.uk/qsedbuk.htm