Our combi has gone plunk, have had 2 call outs with some parts replaced, and then final terminal diagnosis – ie replacement of the majority of the insides…
So, had quote for 3 different boilers as below – we’ve had a WB which has been ok, until last week, so tempted by that, any comments on the 3 please?
1 Worcester Greenstar 25i Combination Boiler
2 Vaillant ecoTEC Pro 24 Combination Boiler
3 Ideal Logic 24kW Combination Boiler
Thanks

Ideal Logic has 10 year parts and labour, that’s what swung it for me a few weeks back. I can now run 2 mixer showers at the same time, which is nice!.

Was 200 quid more expensive than the vaillant, but installer was adamant that it would outperform the vaillant.

Edit – was a 32Kw btw. Cost 2.6k which included a couple of new rads as well.

We are just about to swap from oil to gas, and the plumber has recommended Ideal. Apparently they were properly rubbish, but actually listened to their customers and produced a range of boilers that are excellent quality for a reasonable price.
A quick google of the plumber/diy threads seems to confirm this too.
Been recommended the Vogue as it will be situated in the garage. From what I can gather Logic is for inside installation IANAGF.

Oops, mines is a vogue, not a logic.

Thanks, I’ll look at the specs and see which seems to suit us. There’s about £200 difference in supply & install between the 3.

And for the hat-rick, Worcester Bosch.

Been faultless the 5 years we’ve had it. Called them up a couple of times regards the wireless controller and been really friendly/helpful over the phone (batteries died and couldn’t work out how to pair it with the boiler).

We’ve had WB boilers in the last two houses.

Generally they have been very good, until the gas injectors became blocked with rubbish from the heat exchanger. It took 13 visits by British Gas, including several with WB engineers, to work this out. They must have changed every item in the boiler by the time they were finished. Luckily we were on a maintenance contract so it didn’t cost us a thing.
Apparently WB engineers are very, very expensive.

I had a WB for 7 years….. had it go wrong once.

Called out a local heating engineer, he freely admitted that he knew nothing about them, spent 10 mins reading the manual and then told me that his approach was going to be to “just randomly start replacing parts until it worked again”…. at my expense obvs. He (and his bill) got told to jog-on.

I then called WB who (for 250 quid) would guarantee to be able to fix it (parts and labour) or give you your 250 quid back.

Took him about 30 mins, replaced a filter or summint. Expensive, yes, but god knows how much I would have ended up spending with the local bloke

WB 10yrs no problems at all

We have a Vaillant ecoTec (something or other, don’t think it’s a pro) 32.

We went for Vaillant as our particular installer gets an extended warranty up to 7 years, but if you can get 10 I’d go for that one.

Veissmann here. It heats the radiators and gives us hot water.

We’re having an Ideal vogue put in, primarily because my mate works for them and can get me one at a price so ludicrously cheap it would be daft not to. However my fitter likes Valiant boilers but also suggested that nowadays he wouldn’t relieve himself on a Worcester Bosch boiler as over the last 5 or so years their quality has gone through the floor.

Valliant ecotec here, our installer recommended them or Worcester.
He said if you’re tight on space go Worcester as they’re more compact but that meant servicing/repairs are more difficult but also in his opinion made then slight less reliable as everything was just that be tighter internally

Just had this discussion with our service guy whilst he was replacing a couple of bits on our Valiant boiler.

Their office is split 50/50 on who has Ideal and Valliant at home. They don’t fit WB, so no expertise here.

We are just about to swap from oil to gas, and the plumber has recommended Ideal. Apparently they were properly rubbish, but actually listened to their customers and produced a range of boilers that are excellent quality for a reasonable price.

is exactly what our service guy said. Apparently they produced a cheap boiler for some scheme or other and it came back to bite them.

I suspect we’ll go Valliant when ours finally goes. It’s been in about 17 years, so generally pretty happy.

FunckyDunc
Veissmann here. It heats the radiators and gives us hot water.

Show off.

Worcester Greenstar 25i Combination Boiler

I think that’s what ours is (only just moved in), as above, it gets the house hot and heats the bath water.

Only downside is it threw a hissy fit when I turned the CH on and wouldn’t come on. Followed the manual and reset it and it was fine.

Slightly disconcerting having no controls on the boiler. Just a dial (which I think is water temperature), and a big switch. The last house had a control panel that looked like the flight deck of a 747!

I had the valiant Eco thingy one last year….7 year warranty on it……got to be like a Kia/Hyundai there’s plenty of haters but equally there’s very many more happy customers!

The Ideal supports OpenTherm which might influence your decision (cost saving in the long run).

Valiant ecotec plus is worth a look, Best Buy in which mag and comes with 10 year warranty. (I might have dreamt some of that).

Sorry, it’s the Ideal Vogue which has the 10 yr warranty as others have pointed out, I’ve looked at so many recently, also doing the exercise here as well. Pretty sure that’s the one I’ll go for, offer ends 31 Dec I think.

We’ve decided to go Vaillant. Thanks for replies, we’ll find out next week!

Had our service guy out last week surveying for replacing our current boiler with an Intergas 40Kw combi boiler, no price as yet but he said there are only 4 moving parts which means less that can go wrong!

What’s a decent price for a combi for a small place these days anyway, fitted?

Not salesman on commission price for as high as they can get (like double glazing salesmen), but proper price you should be paying? and is it like windows and you have to haggle and faff about with being pushed into this and that extras you don’t need.

Got an old combi, about 20 or 25 years old that came with the house. It’s mechanically sound. Heats water, heats radiators, not corroded. It’s just the electronics keep crapping out. Mainly one of the sensors which tells it the temperature of the central heating pipe keeps cutting the boiler out so it’s reluctant to heat (though I have a workaround for that). I’m on a British Gas “service” thing where a service means visually look at it, grumble that it’s old and suggest you get a new boiler then go away. They never actually service the thing, it’s just an insurance if it breaks down. They fix it now and again though it’s faff as involves multiple call outs until they send the right guy who actually knows what’s wrong with it.

Anyway, BG price for a new boiler I assume will be ridiculous.

Depends on what boiler you go for and where in the country you are. I’d say anywhere between £1400-£2000.

BG are usually about 50% more than a local engineer. Get a boiler with a decent warranty and you can do away with the service plan as well, just get the guy that fits it back once a year for a service at about £55+vat a year.

^^ what he said.

Look on Ebay for a price for a like – for – like swap out.
I paid £550 for an Ideal Logic 24kw , and £550 to get it fitted , including a power flush as well. Took the guys about 4hrs in total, and most of that time was drilling out the wall as the chimney was 6″ out of line.

The Ideal range come with good warranty on them , and an outside air temp compensater. If the TD is large the boiler will run on max as it knows the house will be cold, low TD and the boiler can modulate down to as low as 4KW and tickle the rads to raise the room temp gradually

Oddly about 1 month ago I had a Greenstar 25i fitted. Was £1850 all in including a full system flush (which took about 4 hours) and a Fernox TF1 filter fitted. Was straight swap.

Seems OK but time will tell.

I paid about £1200 for a Greenstar with fernox filter and treatments plus £300 to fit it.

Go to Grahams the plumbers merchants.

just found this thread after being quoted for a new boiler. ours must be about 40yrs old (potterton) and is only just legal after its latest service.

decided to bite the bullet and get a new combi. we’ve been quoted £1100 all in for a vokera 29kw i think he said.

quick google suggests theyre a decent make, it comes with a 2 yr warranty and includes TRVs (altho he says he’ll knock the price of the TRVs off as we already have them.)

apparently its a 2 man job maybe taking 2 days, and the quote is split into around 50/50 for boiler/fitting, so boiler itself is around £500.
sounds a decent price all in, would you agree?

been talking to plumber about maybe getting a bit better boiler. he said if it was his house he’d probably put in an ideal vogue with 10yr warranty at about a grand which would be pushing us tbh. a different plumber mentioned ideal logic plus with 7 year warranty a bit cheaper, but i can only find that with 2 yrs.

is there anything decent in between the £500 vokera and £1000 vogue with a decent warranty?

thanks

Vaillant 32kw was about 250 cheaper than the ideal, with a 7 year warranty, when we got the vogue installed.

cant seem to find that one, dont spose you got a linky?

ta

Sorry, it was an ecotec pro 28, not a 32.

@sadexpunk I’d steer clear of the Vokera. It’s what’s termed a ‘landlord boiler’ i.e. cheap and not very good. Along the same lines as Heatline/Ravenheat/Biasi, they are cheap for a reason.

The Logic is a decent boiler, 30kw one would be around £750-800, make sure it’s the Plus as that is the 7yr warranty. Vaillant are good but you need a Vaillant Advance installer to get you the 7yr warranty on the Pro 28.

Look at how long the guarantees on each is. Everyone seems to say Worcester Bosch are the best but after getting one installed the plumber then told us that the warranty was only 3 years not 10 years. It is only 10 years if installed by a Worcester accredited plumber like British Gas (you of course then pay a ton more)

After a unrelated visit to the plumbers merchant 2 weeks afterwards I noticed lots of boilers had a 10 year warranty. As this was going into our rental house I was mightily p*ssed off.
Lesson from this was don’t always listen to the plumber as he will install what he always installs and what he finds easy, not necessarily what is best for the customer.

says Wooste

I’ve heard from a couple of different plumbers that WB are trading on an old reputation and the latest stuff isn’t as good. Also, very expensive parts. vaillant have very good rep.

Viessmann and ATag meant to be even better if you can find an installer.

We’ve fitted a Viessmann 222F in our new house – supposedly has benefits of both a system boiler and a combi – mains pressure water but with a much smaller tank (integrated into the boiler) than you would normally have. Ours in 100l whereas even our old 2 bed flat had 150L. It then recharges the tank very quickly using a heat exchanger rather than a coil so that the incoming water doesn’t cool down the tank. In theory you never run out of hot water as at worst you get combi performance but under normal use you can run >1 shower at full pressure.

It took 13 visits by British Gas, including several with WB engineers, to work this out. They must have changed every item in the boiler by the time they were finished. Luckily we were on a maintenance contract so it didn’t cost us a thing.
Apparently WB engineers are very, very expensive.

We had a similar number of visits from British Gas: they turned an intermittent hot water problem on our old boiler into no hot water, no heating and a gas leak. This was in winter with a new baby.

We now use the local Worcester Bosch engineer who is cheaper and better.

Anyone got experience of InterGas boilers?

I’ve dealt with commercial Viessmann boilers and they’re very good. Didn’t know they made residential boilers.

@sadexpunk I’d steer clear of the Vokera. It’s what’s termed a ‘landlord boiler’ i.e. cheap and not very good. Along the same lines as Heatline/Ravenheat/Biasi, they are cheap for a reason.

The Logic is a decent boiler, 30kw one would be around £750-800, make sure it’s the Plus as that is the 7yr warranty
thanks mate, ill take that advice. just waiting for the plumber to confirm its available for that price with the 7 yr guarantee inc any bits n bobs i need (magnaclean and something else that ive forgotten now)

thanks