Keston boiler in cellar removed, heat store in basement, accumulator, Evohome….
This is a house in a fashionable area of SE London. Like may Victorian houses, it’s a lot bigger on the inside than first appears from the outside. A big driveway in London is always a bonus. We were asked to provide a quotation to replace a typically troublesome Keston C55 boiler (55Kw) in the basement. Our customer had experienced numerous breakdowns ever since it was installed in 2004, in fact, I recall them saying that it had never survived a winter without a repair visit. If you have a large Keston, you probably know the story only too well. […]
Oil boiler replacement in Surrey, new flue liner
We often come across an older boiler within a house where the flue runs through an existing chimney. Many customers have been told that a modern condensing boiler can’t be fitted in such a location – but that is usually not the case. Somewhere near Gatwick (customer confidentiality means we don’t ever say where a domestic residence is located). What their installer means by saying it can’t be done is that they either; have no experience, don’t know how it could be done, or simply can’t be bothered. Using an existing chimney does, in almost all cases, require the inside […]
LPG boiler and an Evohome internet control system
We’re in a very rural part of Horsham, in Sussex, for this case study. We’re pleased to say that this is the third new boiler installation job we’ve carried out for this family in two years. Although only around 2% of our installation work features here in our case studies (because one of our boiler renewals looks much like the next, and it takes so long writing it all up), both jobs can be seen on our blog because they were unusual in different respects. We’re replacing an LPG fired (Liquid Petroleum Gas; in this case, Propane) combi boiler in […]
Only one a year?
Recently, Gas Safe Register published some data saying that the average Gas Safe technician may see one dangerous gas appliance a year. In my experience, it is more like one a month. Here are a few examples of things I’ve seen in the last 12 weeks; Example 1: We were asked to install an Evohome multi zone system to a house in Tonbridge, Kent. While we were there, our customer asked us to service their boiler, which was a 6yr old Vaillant ecoTEC+ 831. The boiler was in a little boy’s bedroom, and our customer was mindful that the boiler […]
Truck mounted hoover and a Worcester WAVE
We are in Addlestone, Surrey today. We are replacing a boiler badged and installed by British Gas a few years ago (but we know it is a Gloworm with a bigger margin), with the latest Worcester-Bosch combinaton boiler. The new owners of the property quite fancied getting all their radiators working, as the ones in the recent kitchen extension only worked intermittently, and even then, were lukewarm. They also desired mains pressure hot and cold water, so the no doubt expensive Gloworm (or BG 330 as it is otherwise known) heat only boiler had to go. As things turned out, […]
Rinnai water heater
There are times when it would be nice to relocate everything outside, giving more room internally. Our customer, near Ashford, Kent UK, had already engaged us to fit a warm air unit in an outside cupboard in 2013, using a high efficiency Lennox G61MPVT condensing unit. This has performed admirably, so when a water heating upgrade was required, he turned to us. As things stood, the hot water was heated by electrical immersions and stored in a cylinder on the ground floor, fed by a water tank in the loft. Our customer wanted mains pressure hot water on demand, […]
Complex house heating system of the future (in 1998) gets updated
For this case study, we are in Ealing, West London. Our customer rang us to say he had inadvertently bought a large house with a woefully complex heating system around 8 years ago. The first time he viewed the house, it was perfect – but they never went into the garage. On the second visit, he popped his head into the garage area, and found it completely full of commercial plant, and a ambient temperature of over 30C. Since then, many a central heating specialist has escaped having seen the garage; apparently they are brimming with confidence until the door […]
Listed building with warm air heating, new iron rads and Evohome zoning
Our customer in South London owned a Grade II listed building. It had been extended over the years but still retained many original features. Interestingly from a heating perspective, it had warm air on the ground floor, and no heating on the 1st and 2nd floors, just a couple of towel rails. The warm air was provided by a downflow Lennox open flue unit, and the hot water and towel rails by an Ideal Classic wall hung boiler. A domestic gas meter fed the building, so to limit costs and upheaval it was important that we ended up with […]
Norwood Surgery
Today we are in the Auckland Surgery, Norwood, London. It is a busy doctors practice serving the local community and is always buzzing with patients. Our GP customers had a maintenance contract with one of the major gas companies (with a ‘British’ in their name) and over the years they had become a bit disillusioned with the conflicting advice and multiple warning notices their engineering staff had given. Most involved ventilation, and a considerable amount of time and effort had been expended by our client in meeting the ever more dramatic requests. As a result, the Potterton Kingfisher II boiler […]
New Worcester WAVE
Worcester Bosch launched a new boiler controller in late September 2014, and the first production versions became available late last week (October 24th). Naturally, we wanted to be one of the first installers to get our hands on one, as did two of our customers. So we managed to fit two, one in Caterham Surrey, and the other in nearby Reigate. The Caterham job was for a forward thinking customer, who ordered his boiler system a few months ago and hearing about the impending new release, said ‘I’ll have that’. We took out an old floorstanding Potterton Kingfisher II, […]
