Back boiler to system only

[scotty221975]

Hi all,

been out of the plumbing loop for a good few years now since I passed my NVQs and am now purchasing a property with the old back boilers behind the fire.
It's gonna have to go!
Currently the system is Hot water storage tank, no TRV's anywhere, an old control, probably needs radiators replacing as for the size of the rooms they won't be pumping out enough heat. There's even a large plumbed in heater blower thing on the wall that has to go.
Im assuming a cold water storage tank in loft and expansion tank. Back boiler located on ground floor, hot water tank on second floor.

The house has 3 rooms downstairs, plus kitchen and bathroom. Upstairs has 2 bedrooms and a WC. Each bedroom has a sink at mo and all live.
The downstairs bedroom providing I can get the waste out Im thinking a pumped power shower so a combi is out.

We wont be using gas in the kitchen.

Ideally Id like a system only boiler and then no need for a tank in the loft - but cant recall this in my studies - are these new systems?
Alternatively Id just keep it as it is and get a condensing boiler installed.

What would your advice be? I'm not gonna be doing any of the boiler work or central heating myself as not Gas-safe, so what's the best option. This is likely to be our forever home so would like a system that is relaiable and relatively maintenance free. A ball park figure would be handy if at all possible, BH25 area.
I hear the valiants and Worcester Boschs are still the best units?

Cheers Scott

 

[JCSPLUMBING]

If you don't mind me asking, what do you do for a living now you give the plumbing up? Sounds like you got a nice house there. If it were my house and the water pressure etc was great then I would go down the system boiler and unvented route. Do you still have your invented tickets?

 

[scotty221975]

Didnt get as far as to quit my daytime job and go full-time plumbing as couldn't afford it but enjoyed getting the qualifications, so mainly doing the odd job here and there to bolster income, so not enough knowledge or knowhow or experience to do anything out of the basic category! Im a management accountant at the moment!

 

[Best]

Nothing to stop you doing most of the pipe work and rads (providing you do it to your chosen heating engineers ideas).
Personally if I were you and knew a really good engineer, I would let them do the entire job for the sake of the couple of hundred quid. But by all means do any heavy manual preparity work. You can't beat an experienced engineer, although getting a really good one is maybe not easy.
I would consider using an unvented cylinder as already suggested, if you have good pressure & flow rates. Can be very cheap solution with most units except Megaflow.
Heating system if oil or gas should be a sealed system, which can be an all inclosed system boiler, or separate parts on a standard boiler, which means cheaper to replace them later.
I would use all copper on heating systems especially.

 

[scotty221975]

Thanks for the great advice - yes just need a good engineer. From past experience I have had boilers fitted only to be told months later by another engineer (from a servicing company) that it is installed incorrectly. The servicing company (British Gas once and someone else another time) who were called out for a problem and basically yellow taped the installation and switched off my gas! The problem was that the header tank wasn't the correct distance away from the boiler and was sucking in air or something so had to just raise it up and the flue wasn't sufficiently supported either. British Gas wanted about £1k to fix and then off the record said he'd do it for £350! I got the installer round who said it was installed to spec, but we just knocked up a stand for the F&E and extended the pipe and strapped the flue in - job done!

Any decent engineers out there who'd quote in BH25, New Milton, Hants?

 

[Best]

That's the problem, - not every qualified person will do it right.
You could also try for an installer by posting in the Plumber gas engineer wanted section of this forum, stating your area again