No place like home, EvoHome
This is a post closer to home. In fact it is my home! Our house in Edenbridge, Kent is heated by an Archie Kidd (Thermal) Ltd oil fired boiler, and has around 26 radiators. It was built in 1894 and heating it is an expensive business, because our insulation is hard to improve. In 2005 we installed Honeywell Hometronic. This is a system that uses remote control radiator valves to divide the house into 16 areas of controlled heating. This enabled us to reduce the heating level in rooms we weren’t using in the day, but warm them in the […]
Warm air and radiators, one property, one boiler
For this post, we are in Fetcham, in the area of Leatherhead, Surrey. Our customer had a 1970s house that has been comprehensively updated, including a significant extension which was built around 12 yrs ago with radiators. The existing part of the property retained the original warm air heating, in this case using an old Lennox G8 unit under the hallway stairs. Hot water was provided by a conventional cylinder, this was heated by the boiler being used for radiators, a Baxi Solo 3, in the garage. The warm air unit had been the subject of various warning notices over […]
Welcome to the Hot Water & Central Heating Ltd gallery
A selection of solutions to heating and water issues which might be relevant to your home
New model Worcester-Bosch Danesmoor external
In our previous post we described the unfortunate experience of my brother in law, in Nantwich, where he had a Worcester-Bosch Danesmoor installed by a registered installer, and got a particularly shoddy job. This post is hopefully a better example, because it was one of our installations! Our customer is in the Gatwick area (south east England) and lives in a detached chalet bungalow. He had an older Worcester 14/19 internal oil boiler, which had developed a problem which rendered it beyond economic repair. It also necessitated removal of a granite worktop whenever anything significant required attention, so our […]
Beware approved trader websites
My brother in law lives in Nantwich, having just moved into a rural property. He needed a new oil boiler, but as we are 200 miles away, it wasn’t practical to travel up to do the work. He asked me how he should find a good contractor; I suggested he should find an OFTEC registered installer (OFTEC are the trade technical body for oil fired heating) and also select someone who was a Worcester Bosch Accredited Installer. So far so good, he got a couple of quotes and the chap that impressed him most got the job. This particular contractor […]
New 2013 Worcester-Bosch 25Si Compact
The new Worcester 25Si Compact combination boiler came out in July 2013, and we were one of the first to get one on the wall. In fact, we were more successful getting hold of a boiler than the sales brochure! This new Si Compact model replaces the Worcester 25Si combination boiler, which had been in production for around 7 years, and uses most of the same parts as the CDi Compact boiler, launched earlier in 2013. Like the CDi compact, it has a huge potential market because it is capable (just) of being installed within a standard kitchen wall cupboard. […]
Large old listed country house – 155Kw boiler system renewal
We’ve just replaced the boiler plant in a very large country residence in Sussex (July 2013). The old oil fired Worcester Bosch system heated the house, which was mainly comprised of 60 yr old radiators and large bore steel pipe, as an entire single entity without any zone control. The oil bill (no mains gas here) was £12K per annum. Our customer looked at a number of options, but liked our approach best. Our unique proposal was to improve the efficiency of the boiler room by using weather compensation and load sharing – reduce consumption of oil and increase comfort, […]
Cooking on gas
I went to a house in the Crawley, Sussex, area to provide a quote for a new boiler. The owner has already used us to replace his boiler in his main residence. While I’m measuring up inside for a new boiler, the tenant said, ‘ Are you going to remove the saucepan?’ I get asked a lot of strange questions when doing a quote visit, but this one had me stumped. Why would I change a saucepan? The tenant had appeared perfectly sane up until that point, so I asked what she meant and was directed outside to look at […]
Worcester Bosch new model – the CDi Compact. In Lewisham, London.
The old boiler was in a bathroom, and was giving a few problems. The Ocean Alpha sounds like a UK design, but is really an Italian unit rebranded with a modern name. After 12 years it was ready for the skip. The job was interesting (and we try and feature the interesting ones here, there are loads of jobs that are too similar to feature on this gallery) because our customer wanted an especially shallow depth combination boiler that could be concealed in a 300mm deep wall cabinet. Enter the new Worcester Bosch CDi Compact! This was launched in […]
Oil fired 1969 warm air heater replacement in Chatham, Kent
We were asked to look at a very cold house on the outskirts of Chatham by an older gentleman, whose heating had failed. The warm air system dated back to the mid 1960s, when the house was built. Spares being no longer available, the warm air unit had given it’s last and the house was freezing. The hot water system was similarly antiquated, using a vapourising pot oil burner in the utility room to heat a conventional hot water cylinder upstairs via an indirect water coil. There aren’t many options when it comes to domestic oil fired warm air. Lennox […]
