Hi,

Do any Corgis or home owners have any experiences, good or bad, with these gas boilers

http://www.idealboilers.com/high_conventional.asp


Thanks

JayFive

I have had ideal in a couple of my houses and never had a problem, when I have spoken to gas fitters they always speak highly of them.

Also Ideal boilers are used by Bryant Homes, Westbury Homes and several house builders who must buy thousands at a time and I am sure they wouldn't fit them if the were not any good.

Hope that helps but I am convinced a good boiler fitted badly will always give problems whereas a below average one fitted well will last forever.

James


[Edited by J S W - 1/12/2004 10:33:12 PM]

Hi,

If I were you I would avoid any unconventional type boiler from Ideal full stop.

Their conventional boilers are very good (Ideal Classic) but their condensing and combination boilers (ICOS/ISAR and the minimiser before those) are utter rubbish.

When they first came out, the control boxes were faulty from the factory (explosive ignition / burner lockout), and a retro fit upgrade pack was issued.
The pack consisted of a new control box, replacement ignition and detection electrodes, leads and a main voltage filter.

Even after the retro kit was fitted they were still very poor reliability wise and another fault was discovered. The fan was found to be damaging parts within the control box and so a different fan manufacturer was sourced.

We do admittedly see less of them these days, with only the occasional faulty control box (which costs around £160 for the part) so I guess most of the problems are now fixed, but id still NOT have one myself.

FWIW - If you want a combination or condensing boiler at this time, there are only two manufacturers worth considering, they are worcester bosch and vaillant.

Dont let this put you off Ideals conventional range of boilers though, the Ideal Classic ranks with the Baxi Solo and Glowworm micron as joint best ordinary boilers ever made (although microns have had lots of PCB problems too, version 6 of the board has just been released).

The above is all IMHO, and im sure you will get differing oppinions, but these are my true experiences.

My plumber tells me that the new Ideal boilers have diagnostics like a Scooby select monitor. You need a pc and the software to find out what's gone wrong. Most independents cannot afford to invest in the technology.

Others like Valiant (sp?) use on board diagnostics with faults displayed on the front panel so self servicing is feasible.

Worth considering in any purchase situation.

I concur with New age WRX on this one had no end of trouble on recirculating Ideals on an 8 plot development recently to the point where we no longer use Ideal boilers full stop

As far as I know, the ICOS/ISAR boilers dont have a PC interface onboard. They do have an onboard fault code indicator which is a single digit that flashes between values to notify faults ( H+E and L+F are common ones ;) )

Ideal DO produce (and have for a while) a range of boilers that actually have modem boards inside and connect to a phone line. The boiler model name is prefixed 'RD', which stands for Remote Diagnostics.

The idea is that the boiler monitors itself (flow, return and flue gas temps) and calls your boiler maintainence company in advance of breakdown. Not sure how succsessfull this will be as while they have been selling them for a while, I have yet to see one actually hooked up to a phone line ?????????

2nd thumbs up for the Worcester Bosch...except their pumps don't half make a racket when compared to the humble Grundfos's

:) Ali, take a look inside your bosch - allmost all bosch boilers use grunfoss's - just with a bosch badge on them ;)

Andy

Said Bosch on the label of the pump when I looked, casing seems more rounded and it's silver rather than the trademark pinky red, and has no speed selector switches.

I Suppose models do vary though, might pull off the labels to see if anything is underneath out of curiosity next time I service it.

It's not the first noisy worcs/bosch I've come across.....which is why I located ours in the garage when replacing our old boiler :D