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Well here it goes.
I've been toying with replacing one of my boilers for the last few years. It's an aging Halstead put in over 15 years ago and now has a dodgy heat exchanger.
What to buy?
For years I have been suckered into thinking Worcester Bosch was the ultimate Teutonic solution to all my heating needs. Could it be the inclusion of Bosch within the company name, a well respected and longstanding German brand that brought my loyalty. All this belies the fact that Worcester Bosch is actually a British company with all the associated engineering frailties?
I was chatting to Scott my new 'bestist' plumber mate about Worcester Bosch. Apparently, he was like me a fan but in recent years Worcester Bosch have gone the way of the car manufacturers treating boilers as cash cows for more lucrative maintenance contracts. In so doing they are deliberately engineering their boilers to make them difficult or expensive for non Worcester Bosch engineers to work on them. If you do get a Worcester Bosch engineer out they will very kindly charge you around £200 a pop! Nice...
Scott has pointed me in the direction of some alternatives. The Ideal Logic with a 5 year parts and labour guarantee looks a good starting point. Anybody with another suggestion?
Just for those landlords who like a bit of boiler porn. Check out the picture of the 'bad boy' Ideal Logic above. Rather sleek I think what do you reckon?
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8 comments:
I started to put Bosch Worcestor 24i's in about 7 years ago thinking no more tanks to leak in the loft, no copper tanks to leak & generally they do save money. But I have put dozens of these in, in a lot of my houses & they ALL within about 6 years get a circuit board go £200, fan always within 5 years, £90, so much so that I had Bosch sort me loads for free, because EVERY boiler shouldn't be having the same fault after 4-5 years. I've been putting Baxi's in the last 2 years & EVERY one has had the same leak-Baxi has been fixing that for free. So Combi's are better, tenant's love the cheaper bills, but they aren't as maintainence free as we think. The old back boiler lasts longer if in good nick. Them Ideal ones, yes apparently these 5 year latest ones have much better parts inside, because I had some fitted by the Govt under the Warmfront scheme & EVERY one, I had to take out within 2 years, total breakdown, but I have heard IDEAL have learn't their lesson.
We fit Intergas boilers they are so simple there is little to go wrong with them.
Thanks for the suggestions guys. Looks like it's back to the drawing board!
I have gone for Gloworm - a brand of Vaillant who are regarded as top notch - so far so good......
As a landlord and gas breakdown engineer I still prefer Worcester for reliability over the cheaper brands. Remember all boilers are very electronic rather than mechanical now which reduces reliability and increases cost! Before rushing to the Logic, which is an improvement for Ideal, consider the merits of its predecessors: Response; Isar/Icos. It would be hard not to improve on these!
I had a bunch of Vailants put into a block of flats. All eight went down with a fault in the diverter valve, pretty much the same thing happened the following year.
I have been fitting Gloworm's recently and so far they have not had any problems and were sensibly priced. Whatever you go for, avoid Ravenheat!! One of my properties has one of these and it is no end of trouble, horrifically unreliable and British Gas had no clue how to fix it when it went wrong (again) last year. This boiler is on its last warning now and will be getting changed soon.
On the boiler front if you get a Worcester bosch boiler installed by an approved installer they are currently offering a six year parts and labour warranty available until August 2011. After this it is five year as standard. We are approved installers and can vouch for the reliability of this product. There is also a ten year warranty being offered by Sime on their new combi, never fitted one so cannot offer any advice on this but they must be pretty confident. Alpha also offer a seven year warranty on their boilers and I can also vouch for them.
Kind Regards
S.W.Parker
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