We’re looking at buying a new house. House we’ve seen has a 1970’s back boiler and I know hee-haw about them.

As STW seems to have experience about most things, how are back boilers in terms of utility? I presume the back boiler rules out the ability to have a wood burning stove installed? Is a 1970’s stove destined to be a bit crap and should we just factor in the cost of replacement in our bid?

Ta

The fact its a 1970’s house with a back boiler tells you something – they last forever! Nothing much to go wrong compared with modern boilers. They are less efficient and fire fronts are pretty dated, but one back boiler will out last numerous modern boilers.
They dont meet current regs and I don’t think you can replace it with another back boiler, not sure you can even buy one.
Need to ensure room has adequate ventilation and buy a carbon monoxide detector.
I love my old baxi back boiler when I hear so many work colleagues having problems with modern systems.

That’s good to hear, can you replace the gas fire with a more modern / nicer living flame affair?

I have a house I rent out which has a back boiler. It’s probably not the most efficient of boilers but It’s always passed It’s yearly test & has never needed attention. (that’s fubared it) The gas fire surround is dated to say the least (but chucks out loads more heat than our modern one) but again, not a problem with the gas checks.
Been in since about 1968.

not sure if you can replace one without the other though.

If you’re happy throwing 40% of the fuel you burn straight up the chimney, happy days! 😀

Condensing back boilers are available. They no longer allow gas fires to be front fitted. Electric fires work much better.
Check Baxi. They still make one with a flexible twin walled flue and integral condense pump.
You’ll need a plumber who doesn’t mind heights though.

We used to have one in our cottage in Yorkshire. Obviously very inefficient with a coal fire as most of the heat still goes up the chimney.

The other issue is overheating, ours was HW only, so if you had a fire going and no one used the bath, you would boil the water, at which point all the pipes start banging and you have to run the hot tap quick, before something sprang a leak (no pressure release valve).

We had a back boiler in our old rental.
Only found out when, one winters’ eve, we were sat watching A nightmare on Elm St (1st time we’d used the real fire) and brown goo started coming down the wall 😯

Turns out the water pipe had been just cut off and the heat of the fire was boiling the old water which then started running down the wall.

Last forever, not hugely efficient.

I wouldn’t bother touching anything TBH.

Unless you do a complete replacement to something more modern.

We had a back boiler in a house we rented. One word TERRIBLE! Landlord spent well over 2k fixing it over the years and it never worked properly- you literally never knew if when you got home the think had cut out and your house was cold. Once came home from a long weekend and the house was at 8 degrees!!! Whenever it did get ‘fixed it would only past at most 6 months before the problem returned- plumbers never managed to identify the intermittent problem so it was a suck it and see approach!

Had a back boiler in what looked like a 70s coal fire in our holiday place. It worked and warmed the radiators and hot water through convection I think. Would probably’ve been okay if we’d been there all the time, as in not allowed to cool down.

Had it all ripped out and replaced with a multifuel stove which we use to burn wood only, pretty much, also with back boiler (can’t get gas and didn’t fancy oil), and a pump to send water round radiators.

Still not massively practical for a holiday place, as in you can be stoking away like Casey bloody Jones steamin’ and a rollin’, whist the stove sucks heat out of the room for the first couple of hours turning up on a cold winter weekend. Unlikely an app will be produced to warm it up for us any time before the robots take over.

johnx2, I suggest anthracite, forget wood, it will be a different beast altogether. Once going, stoke, reload & de-ash twice a day, it’ll stay going while you’re out etc etc.

Had one in my first house which only needed a couple of repair jobs doing over the 8 years I lived there.

I’ve been renting out the house for the last 4 years and I’ve just been informed it’s dead and will cost £2500 to rip it out and replace.

Oh, you can’t swap over the fire front as it’s part of the system so if you don’t like it you’re stuck with it until you replace the system.

Cripes, I’m just taking a STW break before I finish taking out a Charnwood stove and back boiler. it is built like the proverbial, but I’m glad the house has a modern boiler now.

Had one in the old family home that was older than me at 29. You can buy a lot of gas for what it cost to replace, so if it’s good to go, just roll with it, but I’d get it checked.

The Fireplace on the front and the back boiler itself are counted as one unit, you can’t get a modern fire for an old boiler.

Just keep using it until it breaks beyond reasonable repair (ours had flames coming out the side of it before it was condemned).

Make sure the room has enough ventilation – IIRC, it draws air from the room so if it can’t get enough it will struggle.

You can get new energy efficient ones to replace your exisiting, but honestly I wouldn’t bother. The fires they come with now look horrible IMO.

Ours was replaced with a new combi elsewhere in the house.

Currently the hole in the living room is boarded up. We might put a wood burner in at somepoint, but honestly the room doesn’t need it so we might just get a fake fireplace.