Has anyone thought about having BG install a new central heating system?? I've not heard much about their service but would be interested to know....

If money is not an issue and you want the years 'free' 3* cover there an option.

Agree if money is no object then go for it as they will be the most expensive quote you get I gaurantee. We had them install our central heating as we had already gone one winter without heating and it was August so couldn't face another winter without heating. They were also doing 3 years interest free credit which swung it for me.

All of the work is contracted out to other plumbers so it's not as if British Gas do the work. Be honest you could probably get the work done much cheaper by a local plumber but I couldn't do with the hassle of waiting for workmen to turn up and I wanted someone to moan at if it all went wrong.

Started work on the day they said and were finished in 4 days. Didn't have a single problem.

Now I know you are all going to say do it yourself it's not that difficult but I just couldn't be bothered!

When we price against British Gas they are allways about £1000 dearer and I know that we are not the cheapest for quotes.

Mog

not all of the work is contracted out to plumbers,about 65% is the rest is done by direct labour.mind you its bloody expensive!

Its really a matter of how much risk you would like to take.

If you know of, or can get good recommendations for people in your area, you will get just as good a job done but at a lower cost.

If you cannot get anyone you KNOW to be good, then the risk is picking up the yellow pages etc. and taking lucky dip.

The benefit with BG is backup, IF you have a problem with your new installation they WILL be back there and sort it out ( I should know ;) ).

LOL will be funny to see how this one goes anyway, I guess im gonna find out how mike wood (prodrive guy) feels, if you know what I mean ;)

By all means, go to BG, and get it done by a CORGI fitter.

Then, like my old man, who had BG come to service his boiler, your son can come round and smell gas, and discover that the gas valve nut was finger tight, and had not been nipped up!!

British Gas?? CORGI fitters??images/smilies/mad.gif

Alcazar

We had exactly the same thing with our boiler. BG serviced it and left. Next minute our house is full of gas. Transco had to turn the gas off until BG sorted it out. As for replacing the central heating system. BG will probably charge twice as much as anyone else. Check out your local area for companies that rely on local business and good recommendations

Bought a Victorian House a few years ago which still had storage heaters in it. Typical Vic House, nightmare to fit central heating in.

Got British Gas to come and quote and design the new system as it doesn't cost anything. Good way of getting free advice. They gave me a standard expensive quote and then offered loads of discounts to tease me with.

Then got a couple of recommended plumbers in. First one quoted a fortune and didn't seem switched on. Obviously didn't want the work/hassle of the job. The second one suggested similar to BG and then improved on their design. Then quoted over £1000 less. He gave me a free years cover for all his work, including a free sevice after a year to make sure all was ok.

Good thread this.

I'm just about to start looking for quotes to replace my eletric storage / convection heaters with GCH. I was thinking of getting a price from BG and a couple of other local companies. I want two rads and one towel rad upstairs, then hall, lounge and maybe kitchen (needs to be a very small one as I don't have much wall space free) downstairs.

One of the guys here at work has mentioned that if you go for a combi boiler you don't need a hot water tank (the water is heated on the fly right?). If you go down that route, is the water pressure sufficient enough for a good shower without needing an extra pump?

Chris.

Chris,

Yes combi boilers provide excellent shower pressure, provided you have good cold mains pressure to your house. Be sure to get a shower that can work with a combi boiler as some are not rated for mains water pressure and can leak internally or are at best noisy.

Good boilers can be had reasonably cheaply but I would avoid the £400 ones if I were you. Around £550 or so buys you a Worcester Bosch 28i junior which is a fantastic little boiler. Up the range from that are some of the Vaillant condensing combi range with stainless steel heat exchangers. Avoid Ideal ISAR's and all Halstead/Wicks boilers.

Andy

Cheers Andy - thanks for the info :)

I think I'd rather pay £100 to £150 more for a better boiler now if that saves you money in the long run (ie better quality hence longer life span and more reliable service)

I'd presume I have good mains water pressure - is there a way to check? I currently have a 'shower' running off the mixer taps but I like a shower that can bruise :D

Oh, and is there anything to choose between makes of radiators? Good old Screwfix seem to have them for reasonable prices.

Chris,

Yep ive got a good way for you to simulate your new shower. Get you car cleaning hose pipe and connect it up to your outdoor tap. Strip off and get your Mrs to blast you with the hose pipe. A good tip is - try to imagine that its hot water and not cold. ;)

Seriously if your tap 'blasts' out when you turn it on the you have good pressure. If your taps trickle you have bad pressure.

The boiler will reduce the pressure slightly as most now have flow restrictors built in to limit the water flow through the boiler. Boilers are rated on how much water (litres/min) they will flow at a given temp increase (typically ~35C), the more powerfull the boiler, the more water it will flow at its design temp increase. Flowing the water faster than the design rating will lower the temp increase and vice versa.

My fav radiators are stelrad elite's. Good quality and nicly finished out of the box. There isnt that much to choose from really between them all, but elite's get my nod.

Andy

Andy..the flow restrictors fitted to combi boilers have no effect on pressure whats so ever, what is important is the flow rate as you could have a water main pressure as low as 1bar and still get 18 lts a minute, vice versa you could have a pin hole in a pipe with the water jetting out at 6bar but only flowing 1 lt a minute. The best way to test flow rate is to time how long it takes to fill a 1 lt container from the kitchen cold tap, divide that figure by 60 and that will give you lts per min ...and then you can match a boiler spec to that.

Mog

Mmm. Interesting. I think it shouldnt effect the static pressure, but what about when the water is actually flowing? Ill have to test this with a pressure gauge tee'd into a H/W line with and without the flow limiter fitted. Totally agree with you in your example using different 'holes' (to get 18 l/min @ 1 bar it must be much larger than a pinhole) , but on the same rig (15mm pipe dia) using the same outlets I would have thought lower flow rate would show a lower pressure on the gauge ?

My understanding is that 'flow rate' is a product of pressure and pipe diameter. The flow restrictor LOWERS the pressure after itself in the pipeline and given a constant pipe diameter, less volume of water will be output at the open end of the pipe (thus lower measured flow rate).

Found a link that explains it a little better than I

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/BODY_AE107

We could apply this to gas pipe too. Connect your manometer to the INLET pressure test point on a boiler. Fire the boiler and you should hopefully get no change in the inlet pressure (~20mb or so). Now start to close the appliance's gas isolation valve. The isolation valve is starting to act as a 'flow resrictor'. You should now start to notice a difference on your manometer. Turn the gas valve off at the boiler stat and the manometer will rise back to ~20mb.

When alls said and done, done forget that the water is being PULLED out of the open end of the pipe by lower relative atmospheric pressure - so again given the same pipework the pressure must be lower to have less water PULLED out of the pipe ?

Please dont missunderstand this as a silly tit4tat 'im right' campaign, hopefully we are above that. I have added you to my VIP list and had a look through your posts and I can see you are VERY knowledgeable (MUCH more so than the average plumber/gasfitters that I encounter anyways).

Im looking forward to some interesting and friendly conversation, tips & hints - Ive only just discovered this part of the forum.

I gave a small indication in an above post as to who I work for (Im an engineer at British Gas) and despite the obvious differences between competing companys, I dont see any reason why two fellows of the same trade cannot 'get on' :) hopefully you are of the same opinion.

What kind of age/experience level are you at if you dont mind me asking? Im 28 been with B.G. 12 years, drive a humble MY02 WRX interests are mainly computers, shooting and skydiving.

If im incorrect about the whole pressure thing going on above, then I am glad you have put me right.

Best regards Andy



[Edited by NewAgeWRX - 1/17/2004 8:23:52 AM]

A quick and dirty test with my measuring jug shows 1/2 a litre in 2.5 to 3 seconds, so my abacus equates that to 12 litres per min. Does that sound reasonable?

Chris,

12 l/min sounds fine to me, alot of the older combi's wouldnt keep up with that but modern ones are doing 10 l/min at a good temp rise easily, and some of the larger ones a fair bit more than that.

Andy

Thanks Andy - advice is much appreciated :)

Some really good advice there. Indeed a grand diference is definately right. Customers of mine originaly called out the blue. I went round did the necessary etc... A grand less nion to the penny customer told me on completion Id beaten BG. Cant slate BG they are on the whole a very good company obviously with ref to posts on here there are some bad engineers etc. We did work for BG as contractors years in fact I had six pipe fitters and one corgi engineer for a long time till they had a shake up and I stepped out. Money orientated of course.. The contacts manager changed to a spotty youngster who wouldnt hear or listen. Since sacked, gave out the work unfairly. You can accept a difficult installation ie one in four or five but not every single installation for five months being nasty ie no profit. When I tacled him about it he said we were the only firm that would do it with out moaning. My blokes were and still are profit share related so became at the time very negative so it was no longer financially viable .. BG write every other month and invite me back but it took a long time to recover from the loss of fair installs i.e a fair days pay a fair days work etc.etc. My own fault really should never put all your eggs in one basket. And now we are so busy its just silly and bear in mind we were paid about a grand per install and now we are booked usually 3 months at least in advance at over double the cost and we still come out as i say a grand cheaper than BG.. Definately good advice Valliant, Worcester and poterton good stuff. Wickes Boilers in my experience are a complete load of tosh (and thats being polite with effort) Hope of some help ...



Regards dick

Dick, ill go along with that entierly.

As said I am a BG engineer and have been since I left school. That said, I dont LOVE the company I work for and am in no way a 'yes man'. There are more and more things that BG are doing these days that I dont agree with. Im there purely cos they pay me, no other reason, I have NO asperations within BG. Im 28 and about 4 years away from paying my mortgauge off so my plan is to stay with them till im home and dry and then I can look further afield, possibly work for myself - I have a very good friend who is a CORGI inspector ;).

At the moment the only reason to have C/H installed by BG are if you have noone else you can trust to do it. You will pay a premium but the backup IS good.

An example I can give you is this - If you have fitted any Glowworm Micron boilers lately they will have PCB version 5 on them.
The programming on the ROM chips on the PCB is incorrect and causes the boiler to wait until its fully cold before it will fire again after a demand. Its only a problem with 50,000 BTU and above boilers (these have pump overrun, 40,000 and below dont). Glowworm have been down to our national parts centre and replaced all our stock of the boards, but I just wonder how many plumbers would even know about this let alone do anything about it. There are simular problems with many boilers when they are new (Ideal have an upgrade kit for the ICOS/ISAR and Minimiser boilers which to my knowledge is only available to BG).

Anyways even though I work for BG, as Ive said above to mog - greetz to all the CORGI's / Plumbers on this board - hopefully we can share info and tips. Im sure i'll learn as much off you guys as you can from me.

Cheers Andy

Hi Andy...for a bit of background I am 38 and have 22 years in the trade with 15 of those being self employed, the last 5 years I have been in partnership with another plumber which if you can find someone who you can trust, has a similar quality of work and can be relied upon 100% makes life much easier as alot of jobs are two handed (and I'm getting old). At the moment I am driving a Audi RS4 which I think will stay for a long time.
Alot of what you have said is correct and between us I think it has said it all .....apart from the flow regulater which is basically a plastic disc with holes in it to reduce the volume of water passing through and not the pressure, the only way pressure is reduced is by fitting a pressure reducing valve which has a pre-tension spring and seating which the water must push against to open it to create flow with less pressure.

Regards
Mog