General Chat

Ours is an ordinary boiler with a storage tank of hot water in the airing cupboard. The boiler itself is outside. It gives no trouble if I can nag them sufficiently to get it serviced. We have about 850 litres a year of oil. The boiler, for the first time ever, came on automatically in the night once the temp had reached -10.

The trouble is that the choice was taken away. The powers that be insisted that all boilers should be the condensing type so I dread our ordinary one going wrong.

I had a condensing boiler put in for free last year from a Warm Front grant ,it will be more economical i was told,well it has been nothing but trouble since day one,and it s using 500ltrs of oil every 3 weeks,when the water is on it hardly fires,but as soon as i put the heating on it drinks it like a sponge,ive had them out time and time again each engineer saying something different,so when we have got over this holiday time they wont know whats hit them,my nickname has always been the dragon,well they had better duck or put an asbestos hat on because im going to breath fire.I am totally fed up and totally skint,my pension wont stand it any more.ive got the M.D,S name and will call him tuesday,they even fitted a part wrongly which caused the water tank to corrode,this was discovered by the person who came to service the monster.--well enough ranting.just to say think twice before you change your boiler.

wendy(lincs)

Joan , on the news at 6.00 p.m. and said Scotland was the same as N I. government owned but that Scotland had been investing for 10 years whereas NI had only been investing for 5 years!

Just been speaking to friend who lives in Lisburn, she says she is Ok but her daug wasn't. Biggest bugbear is that no info available either on phone, internet or Ulster Radio.

N. Ireland residents do not pay separate water rates, there were moves afoot some years ago to set this up and there was uproar. Wonder if Scots pay separate water rates?

I wondered that Chris, seems strange so many affected doesn't it?

We had a new boiler October 09 and in consultation with the plumber decided to replace like with like! Perhaps that is why they are in such trouble in N. Ireland with pipes and boilers.

In their wisdom the previous government decided that all boilers installed after a certain date should be condensing boilers. They even encouraged people to ditch their perfectly good working boilers to get a condensing one as it would be cheaper, paying for itself in 10 years. It now turns out that invariably they don't last longer than 6 years. Our plumbers, just before the law came in advised us to stick with the old type thank goodness.

Apparently (and our neighbour has one and has been advised this), condensing boilers can't cope with the type of cold weather we have had. The water draining from the boiler freezes in the pipes which are (according to neighbours plumber) 'like spaghetti in there'. If you have one of these boilers the pipes that can be seen need to be well lagged to protect against frost.