In message , Andrew Gabriel
writes
In article ,
Ian Stirling writes:
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
"JJJ" writes:
A plumber just told me that you're lucky if you get more than 10 years out
of a condensing boiler - because of their complexity and the fact that the
condensate rots them from the inside out...

is he right?

I suspect so. The earlier ones didn't last that long,
mainly failures due to corrosion. Current ones should be
better in this respect.

The high tech microprocessor/microcontroller boards used
in them won't be able able to be made in 10 years time
when I would expect many to fail. Most of the components
will be long obsolete and no one will redesign a board to
use modern components just for the spares market. The life
of the units will be limited by the quantity of up-front
spares manufacturers stock, and it really isn't in their
interests to do this. (and what Geoff gets working again.)

It's pretty much at the point that this could almost be irrelevant.
You design a generic board, with plenty of sensor interfaces, relay
outputs and stuff.
You then plug this into a board with connectors for the original
plugs, and your generic board.

This might be a bit more expensive for OEM, but should be fine for
spares.

Who is going to go to the effort of working out the
programming though? Without the manufacturer's original
design data (such as graphs plotting premix fan speed
against gas valve proportional control), you can't do it,
except by trial and error. You would never get GC approval
for something like that.

The interface board connects up some connectors that are mandatory, for
example, if it has an overheat stat that should shut off all bar the
pump, that's hardwired.
Everything else is done in software, loading a profile of the correct
boiler.

If it reached the point where most boiler manufacturers
outsourced the microcontroller control aspects to one of
a limited number of companies or bought off-the-shelf
solutions from a small number of companies specialising
in this area, then this might just happen.

No way ...

They'd all have proprietary software burned in them, which the boiler
manufacturers would hold the copyright on


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--
geoff