Advice on home boiler system replacement

[hackscribble]

Hi there

Our house was built in 1998. Sealed central heating system with a Megaflo for hot water. The builders fitted two boilers connected in parallel (Vaillant ThermoCompacts with 18kW output each), presumably to get enough capacity to heat the whole house plus HW. A couple of rooms were converted to electric UFH some time ago as part of an extension build, so the number of rooms needing CH has gone down.

One of the boilers is getting unreliable, so we are thinking the time may be coming when we need to replace the boilers.

Would welcome advice on the following:

1. Assuming that suitable boilers are available with enough output, any reason NOT to replace the two old boilers with one new one?

2. Are there any additions / changes to the system that we should get done at the same time, that maybe weren't around 15 years ago? When we had our boiler service with British Gas, they kept pushing sludge filters (?).

Thanks

Ray

 

[Howsie]

Welcome to the forum. It's a odd choice to fit two boilers as that kw requirement can easily be satisfied by one.

Get a couple of decent plumbers to come and have a look and make some suggestions. Where are you based?

 

[hackscribble]

Welcome to the forum. It's a odd choice to fit two boilers as that kw requirement can easily be satisfied by one.

Get a couple of decent plumbers to come and have a look and make some suggestions. Where are you based?

Thanks, Howsie. We're in Kingston KT7.

 

[Howsie]

Oooo just down the road from me. 😀 I'm based in Esher.

 

[hackscribble]

Oooo just down the road from me. 😀 I'm based in Esher.

Thanks, Howsie. I'll DM you when we get going on this.

 

[gmartine]

Run Howsie, he's going to Doc Martin you.

 

[kris]

Hi Ray and welcome , firstly what size is your house as im sure a 30kw system boiler would cope depending on house size or maybe slighly bigger,,
I bet the 2 boilers you have dont have a low loss header which if the system was fitted nowadys it would,, to explain what i mean read this,
http://www.seekcg.com/pdf_files/LowLoss_HydronicHdrs.pdf

But nowadys a single boiler will sufice as outputs have increased greatly an all are condensing no so you may have a little bit change in pipework . ie larger dia gas pipe etc,

Call some local engineers to get no obligation free qoutes and advice on upgrading

 

[hackscribble]

Thanks kris. It's five bedrooms. The development has houses of various sizes, so all I could think of was maybe the builder bought a job lot of the boilers and doubled them up on the larger houses 🙂 Anyway, I'll take the advice on board and get some quotes.

 

[PhoenixServices]

Only benefit really to having two is if 1 breaks down you still have heating till its up and running. I put two in all the time on large houses but they are usually a lot bigger than 5 bedrooms.

 

[Howsie]

Thanks kris. It's five bedrooms. The development has houses of various sizes, so all I could think of was maybe the builder bought a job lot of the boilers and doubled them up on the larger houses 🙂 Anyway, I'll take the advice on board and get some quotes.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.