Oil combination boiler updates Kent Oast House

Our customer had very recently moved to a picturesque Oast House near Headcorn, Kent. Oast Houses are typically found in Kent and although no longer used for their original purpose, retain the round towers and pitched roofs so beloved by picture postcards. Our customer wanted to maximise their internal space, which is always at a premium in a round house and this meant the larder had to be vacated of a poorly maintained Firebird heat only oil boiler; and the bright yellow oil fired AGA also had to go. Sadly, oil fired AGAs are no longer desirable, being temperamental, old, […]
Large Church installation; 3 plus 1 boilers

Earlier this year we were invited to provide a costed design solution for a new boiler plant at St Johns Church, Tunbridge Wells. A large, Grade II listed building, probably the largest church in the area, it comprises an enormous high ceiling worship space, with the addition of vestry and offices. The church building management team knew pretty much what they wanted to achieve, helped by their professional engineering roles in the electrical power industry. We found a cascaded set of three commercial 50Kw cast iron Ideal atmospheric boilers. The Church technical team had previously fitted a BMS (Building Management […]
Archie Kidd boiler replaced (*) with another oil boiler pioneer

Our customer lives in Kent in a 1890s set of railway construction workers cottages. When the property was refurbished in 2004, he specified an Archie Kidd (Thermal) VHE Model 1 oil boiler. This was before the UK Government had latched onto condensing boilers being the future. In fact Archie Kidd had designed his Model 2 prototype in 1959 as part of his strive for energy to be conserved and not wasted needlessly. The Kidd Model 1 should last in excess of 30 years, so it was a shame to remove this now discontinued British leader in the history of heating […]
Navien Oil Boiler Cascade replaces Biomass plant

For this case study, we are on a 660 acre farm on the Surrey/Kent borders, comprising a number of industrial units, home and other uses, where once 6000 pigs used to roam. The owners of the farm complex were influential with some of the first biomass developments, and while advising other users over 20 years ago, they fitted a plant in their farm industrial area. Their Farm2000 biomass plant used timber and other waste, and was connected to a large underground steel pipework distribution system. Heat on the lucky units and houses connected to the system was unmetered, and it […]
Nursing Home fast track boiler plant cascade renewal during COVID lockdown

Our case study today refers to a job we carried out in the first lockdown in 2020. A local care home had earlier used our services to repair a Worcester boiler in a wing of their building. We got a call during the first COVID lockdown, when everyone was at home and the roads were deserted. Their main boiler plant was giving problems and they wanted us to look at it. The main boiler room looked quite ordered from the outside; two flues sticking out had cages and it looked purpose made. however once the door was opened things didn’t […]
Viessmann Cascade in large house

For our case study today, we were called to inspect a large house in Surrey, completely refurbished around 7 years ago, with multiple underfloor and radiator heating zones. The house had a basement boiler room, containing a pair of 46Kw Vaillant EcoTec 46Kw light commercial boilers, using a cascaded flue system and a header. A maintenance company had paid a number of visits to keep the boilers running, but they were plagued with frequent reliability problems. The last inspection had also raised issues with the flue header and chimney lining installation, even though they had been maintaining it for years […]
Johnson & Starley warm air replaced by Worcester Bosch boiler and EasyControl

This case study begins in a terraced house in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. A kitchen renewal has a short while ago necessitated the warm air heater being relocated into the garage. Our customer had some concerns over the way this part of the work had been carried out, and it turned out they were right to be worried. Generally speaking, moving a warm air unit is not easy… there’s ductwork deep under the floors, which are usually concrete, and most older warm air units have a vertical ‘open’ flue, akin to a fireplace. So moving the box itself isn’t difficult, it […]
ATAG Opentherm Evohome Sevenoaks

Today we are in Sevenoaks, Kent, in a road where we now have installed at least three boilers, and three Evohome multi zone systems too! Our customer knew about heating systems, and chose an ATAG i series boiler. He wanted a unit that was of high quality manufacture, and one that could use Opentherm controls, so that the house could modulate the boiler intelligently. As the local ATAG and Honeywell Evohome specialists, we were asked to advise and quote for the job. A leaking Ideal condensing boiler was scrapped, and the plan was to fit the ATAG in the same […]
Viessmann light commercial in Edenbridge

Pyser Optics are a long established company in Edenbridge, specialising in equipment for broadcasting and defence markets across the World. In fact, in a previous job, I used to order Broadcast TV camera lenses from them! Small world, they say. We were asked to specify a replacement for a 96Kw output SIME cast iron sectional boiler, which had been classed as unsafe. It was used to heat the main administration block of Pyser. Our heat calculations suggested that an 80Kw boiler would be more than adequate. We provided Pyser Optics Ltd with two options; a cheaper solution using a mainstream […]
New model ATAG combi, runaway installer and Evohome zoning using OpenTherm

We’ve been installing commercial sized ATAG boilers for some time, in fact, you will find some others on this blog. ATAG have recently relaunched their domestic offering in the UK, and now offer 10 year warranties and 24hr technician support. ATAG are a premium brand boiler manufacturer from the Netherlands, although a stake is now owned by Ariston MTS Group. Our customer had selected an ATAG IC Economiser 39, which is a combi boiler augmented with ‘designed at birth’ flue gas heat recovery (rather than tacked on afterwards like most other manufacturers), and reputed to be the most efficient boiler […]