New boiler

[Deejay]

Morning DW

Our daughter recently had a replacement gas boiler fitted by Npower.

New wall hung boiler in the kitchen, new TRV's on all the rad's and a Magnaclean.

I think the price included three years warranty and servicing.

£2,800

Hope that didn't set off the airbag

Cheers

Dave

I find it mind boggling that some one turns up - fits a £800 bolier perhaps another £100 for TRVs, - lets call it £1000 in total, for a job that 1 man can do in 1 day, let alone 2 men in one day. Lets go with the latter - 2 men, 1 day job.

That's £1800 for labour etc. - £900 each. Over £100 per hour. The question is for fceking what? My local Audi dealership has £100k's of investment in equipment in the servicing side, along with probably more in premises, rates, etc. And they don't charge that sort of labour rate, and along comes a person - who lets face it is a technician - not an engineer - who feels he can charge over £100 per hour. Bloody p!ss take!

I don't feel the charging is transparent in anyway shape or form - just purely pushing it as far as they can go short of the customer saying no. But can the customer say no - no heat or hot water and all the players in the game charge the same sort of rate.

Sorry Rant over!

Dibs

Hello Dibs

Feel better now?

It's not actually quite as bad as it sounds. There was a bit more to it than swapping a boiler.

The daughter and her husband live just outside Bath.

They had a back boiler in the living room, behind the fireplace, with a hot water cylinder upstairs. That fed a shower with a pump and the DHW.

Two contractors from Sheffield arrived at eight o'clock on the appointed day.

They hung the new boiler on the kitchen wall and plumbed it in which involved lifting the floors in a bedroom and the landing. They powered up the boiler on a mains lead, power flushed the system and commissioned it.

The old HWC and back boiler were recovered and taken away (beer money, fair enough) The shower pump is now in my shed, awaiting re-cycling.

They left at about ten o'clock at night; probably on 'job a knock'.

A few days later a spark came in, provided a new fused spur and fitted a new controller.

So, they now have a new system, guaranteed (including the old rad's and pipework) and serviced for two years (not three as I thought). What they have bought is peace of mind, for two years.

When I fitted my first system there were very few regulations in force. Corgi, never mind Gas Safe, had not been invented and people were allowed to use their common sense and take the consequences if things went wrong.

I wired my own controls on the same basis.

How things have changed. I'd be quite happy to fit a new boiler, but where would I get the software to run on a laptop to commission it? Don't mention part P.

Nobody can argue against doing things properly and safely, but I agree that sometimes 'the trades' use regulation as a licence to empty our wallets.

Cheers

Dave

 

[Eric The Viking]

Nobody can argue against doing things properly and safely, but I agree that sometimes 'the trades' use regulation as a licence to empty our wallets.

Cheers

Dave

I knew it was a scam years ago, after I'd fixed THREE gas leaks the BG man failed to find (with a sniffer box). He condemned our gas fire (now't wrong with it), but missed one leak on the boiler and two under the kitchen floorboards. He never put a manometer on it, either.

Anyway, what is one supposed to make of byelaws that suggest a certain amount of leakage is acceptable???!!!

Mutter, mutter, fume...

PS: I forgot to mention that BG announced a couple of years ago that they would no longer bother with CORGI certification for fitters, I think as it was too expensive. Cycling proficiency test instead, perhaps?

 

[Digit]

I did a gas job for a friend who then arranged for the meter etc to be installed. The fitter flatly refused to connect to my work and described it as 'dangerous'. I called in his boss who complemented my work and made the connection!

Roy.

 

[Dibs-h]

Hello Dibs

Feel better now?

Dave

Yes - thank you. :lol:

Nobody can argue against doing things properly and safely, but I agree that sometimes 'the trades' use regulation as a licence to empty our wallets.

Cheers

Dave

You've nailed it on the head there.

WRT to your daughter's install - that still puts the hourly rate at somewhere north of £75 which is ludicrous.

As for guarantees - you can pay the likes of Homeserve around £15 per month or less and almost all the stuff in your house is insured\guaranteed - i.e. water, heating , leccy. I suspect in your daughters case - that'll be the case. You can get that yourself - it needn't be thru an installer. So even if you deduct £300 or so for 2 yrs premiums - it's still hardly value for money.

But then again - it's not Rip off Britain without a reason. :wink:

Being interesting to see what DW's quotes come in at & for precisely what - other than fleecing him! :lol:

Dibs

 

[RogerM]

Being interesting to see what DW's quotes come in at & for precisely what - other than fleecing him! :lol:

Dibs

We could start a sweepstake. My bid is £2,950 inc VAT


edit: Actually, with a new position for the boiler, new flue thru roofspace etc. make that £3,450.

 

[devonwoody]

I win my bid is ???????????????? :wink:

I reckon where he wants to put the boiler with flue to go through the ceiling there is going to be a 4x2 joist and electric cables as well , do I tell him now and will he charge me for any changes anyway?

 

[Digit]

I installed our heating system myself and then had it commissioned, and boy did I have problems!
I was 2 days out of hospital and confined to a chair, the engineers, 2 of 'em, were completely stimied as my design was non-standard.
I had disconnected the boiler's timer and replaced it with a wireless room stat, I produced the wiring diagrams and they went off to study them.
When they returned I explained that before they fired up the boiler they would have to close a certain gate valve.
I had plumbed the DHW circuit into the existing low pressure DHW cylinder so that in the event of the boiler packing up I could shut the boiler's DHW circuit off, open the gate valve and turn the immersion heater on. Took them two hours to come to terms with that!

Roy.

 

[Dibs-h]

I win my bid is ???????????????? :wink:

I reckon where he wants to put the boiler with flue to go through the ceiling there is going to be a 4x2 joist and electric cables as well , do I tell him now and will he charge me for any changes anyway?

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for the flue out the roof. Am I missing something?

 

[Dibs-h]

I win my bid is ???????????????? :wink:

I reckon where he wants to put the boiler with flue to go through the ceiling there is going to be a 4x2 joist and electric cables as well , do I tell him now and will he charge me for any changes anyway?

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for the flue out the roof. Am I missing something?

 

[Digit]

Our commissioning engineer seem to prefer the roof option as well, wanted to know why I had passed the flue through the wall.
With a 'flat' roof above I took the most water proof option.

Roy.

 

[devonwoody]

The reason for going through the roof is that there is not another outside wall available to fit the boiler, hence going up through the ceiling, but I know there is going to be a joist over the top of the boiler.

 

[Eric The Viking]

The reason for going through the roof is that there is not another outside wall available to fit the boiler, hence going up through the ceiling, but I know there is going to be a joist over the top of the boiler.

Get another plumber.

You can run an ordinary modern flue about 20ft, up, down or any direction you choose. So it can exit the boiler at the top, going sideways and run wherever you want it to. You _will_ need an extension kit, which will add to the cost, but a wall exit basically only needs a (roughly) 100mm hole (diamond drill) wherever you choose to put the pipe. The hole for the flue is also the boiler's air intake (concentric), but even that isn't essential.

If you want to get clever, I know of one design that uses a pair of 2" plastic water pipes as the flue and the air inlet (yes, really), and that will work over 20m (yup, sixty-five and a half feet). Keston, who make it, have a very good reputation - wish I'd bought one now, instead of the Vaillant money-pit I presently have.

There's no reason to go through the roof unless your plumber is too lazy to use Google.

 

[Dibs-h]

The reason for going through the roof is that there is not another outside wall available to fit the boiler, hence going up through the ceiling, but I know there is going to be a joist over the top of the boiler.

Why not put it somewhere else? Where you have an outside wall - as long as the piping (CH, DHW, Cold feed & gas) is relatively close, why not move it somewhere more convenient. Or is the "room" it's going in the most suitable - even if not the best.

HIH

Dibs

 

[RogerS]

Why not stick it outside? Will free up space inside. If it's noisy, you'll not hear it any more. I shifted our oil boiler outside and that freed up a huge amount of room plus no oil smells. Wish I'd gone for the combined combi/vented route though in hindsight.

 

[devonwoody]

Roger, how does a boiler cope with minus temperatures of perhaps minus 8C if boiler is situated outside a property, surely there are times this might cause a severe problem. Think power cut and boiler cannot restart and in the meantime boiler froze up?

 

[RogerS]

Not a problem as it will be on and so generating heat to keep itself cosy. They are reasonably well insulated as well and many have a frost stat.

 

[devonwoody]

No electric for three days, means no heating for three days at minus 8C, make sure the insulation is really good Roger. The reason I persist is that we had a boiler in the garage and it froze up 30 years ago when the new house owners had the property later on. Not a plumber or electrician on site for days.

 

[wobblycogs]

Our boiler, and I presume most modern boilers, have internal frost protection so if the temperature drops down low enough it will go for a short burn (IIRC it kicks in at 5degC). This covers you for those situations where the boiler is not firing to keep the house warm such as when you are on holiday or if it is outside.

As for the leccy being off for three days I'd guess it wouldn't really matter if the boiler was outside or inside. I doubt most houses are well enough insulated that they wouldn't be freezing after three days at -8.

 

[devonwoody]

I am assuming the frost guard only kicks in when there is an electric power supply also available?

 

[wobblycogs]

Yep, as well as all the circuitry modern boilers use a electric igniter so need power to fire up. They don't use much power though so it should be easy enough to provide if your electricity goes off regularly, perhaps a small generator or a car battery and inverter.