New Boiler or Fix 10 Year old Boiler Help and information on all topics relating to your central heating, air conditioning and ventilation issues.

[hamerish]

So me and my partner bought our first house in May. The previous owners skimped out on every part of the house possible, bodge jobs galore. We have remedied the majority of them. The last area to look at is the combi boiler, it has given us a few problems since we moved in and now coming up to winter im sure it can only get worse.

Firstly we had a plumber round due to occasionally not getting hot water through the taps even though the boiler was kicking in when the taps were turned on. He told us it was an issue with the shower, so we got it replaced. It wasn't an issue with shower as the problem persisted.

So we got a different plumber round, he told us the boiler is pretty old(8-10 years) and air was being trapped in the system. So he gave it a service/changed some parts. It fixed our original issue, great!!!..or so we thought.

We now have an issue where a red fault LED will come up and the boiler wont work again until the boiler has been reset(turned off and back on again), it seem to happen every 2-3 days. Obviously something is not right with the boiler.

The boiler fitted was a Vokera Compact which from what I can tell is one of the cheapest boilers around and considering its 8ish years old I thinking we may start to get issues more regularly.

Is it worth trying to get it fixed? At this point I feel like we are just going to end up throwing money at it.

If we do get a new one fitted, should we go for a similar boiler? a modern vokera compact. My thinking is that it will be similar size with inlet/outlets in similar places so may be cheaper to get installed. Or do we go with a more expensive boiler, which maybe be more expensive to install as well.

Some points to consider, the boiler is located in the loft room and has plenty of space around it. I have a Tado Smart thermostat that I wanted to install but will now wait until the current issue are resolved. We also only plan to stay in this house roughly 5 years, due to us requiring something bigger in the future(currently expecting our second child)

Apologies for the wall of text, any help is much appreciated.

[Tony70]

Hi
I would suggest getting a new boiler with a 5 yr guarantee at least you will have piece of mind for the duration of you ownership,
The last thing you want is the added expense of worrying about the boiler breaking down,even more cost if it,s out of guarantee.
For about £1500 supplied,fitted and tested should see you right.
Then all you have to think about is the expense of the new family addition..
Best of luck and congrats

[ericmark]

You can get service plans so over 5 years it would break even, however they can ask for all sorts to be done before taking it on, so impossible to work out cost.

So there are two basic types of combi boiler, condensating and non condensating and the condensating type can be split into three groups.
1) No eBUS access.
2) eBUS assess only using that manufacturers thermostats i.e. Bosch.
3) eBUS using OpenTherm so you can use third party thermostats.

So if you change from a non condensating boiler to one with OpenTherm you could vastly increase control and so also running costs. However it does not stop with the boiler, EvoHome is really good, but not cheap, so question is how far to go?

A Terrier i30 head on the TRV will allow programming of a sort, and a thermostat in the room kept the coolest could be enough to make the system preform close enough to what EvoHome can do that simply not worth the extra money?

However I think Tado is similar to EvoHome and is OpenTherm enabled so getting a boiler with OpenTherm may be best answer. But saying a boiler is old and cheap does not mean it's no good.

This house has a Bosch boiler, it works very well and reasonably reliable likely as yours 10 years old, it does modulate however it is not OpenTherm enabled, can use Wave thermostats but that only works in one room, in spite of the failings it is not worth changing it, do wish it was OpenTherm but not worth changing to use EvoHome.