Because this quote is about double what I was expecting. Or is this just normal 2026 prices?
Our boiler is still functional but it's on its last legs and the thermostat is becoming sentient and trying to cook us in the middle of the night. We're not desperate but need one this year probably.
This is from British Gas. We already pay for their Homecare service which to be fair has been worth every penny during a couple of different failures.
I won't bored you with the details but we've had a nightmare in the past with man-in-van plumbers who come via word of mouth recommendations. Especially when you need one in an emergency. The British Gas engineers have been spot on in comparison.
Still, we don't owe them anything so if I can have the same kit supplied and fitted for less money it's worth asking.
Oh, and I just realised I have no idea what the 'tailored extras' are.
Just had a new one fitted - Worcester something, magnetic filter for something, new ESi remote controller etc. - £2400. My man in a van, who's reliable and trustworthy.
Looks pretty good to me. I wouldn’t have expected much change out of £4,000-£5,000 so it looks like a bargain.
I wouldn’t get another Worcester. Given the choice I’d go for a Vaillant or Wiessmann.
If you are comfortable with British Gas it's not that far out price-wise - especially if you don't already have a relationship with a decent local plumber.
Does that say a 15kW boiler? That's pretty small, I hope that's for a compact 2 bed house with no big loads like a shower. Yeah expensive. When I was considering replacement vs. a big repair bill earlier in the year the likes of Boxt were quoting about £2500 for a 25kW compact combi straight replacement with no complex relocation or system changes.
magnetic filter for something,
Basically to keep the pipework and heat exchangers clean. Current boilers come with a pretty decent warrantee, (typically 7 to 10 years) and having a magnetic filter and regular servicing is a requirement for them to honour it.
Very much depends on the boiler. I had a large Valliant fitted a good few years ago for £3500
I've not used them myself, but you can compare the quote you get from this site
Friends were looking recently as her mum's boiler had packed in and local plumbers were quoting "3k, we can do it in a few days". Boxt were cheaper for them and - I think - could do it quicker. They use local pumbers to do the actual work
we got a 20kw combi alpha fitted in mums house in january by a local lad for 1700.
it was a direct swap. boxt were 2400
Does that say a 15kW boiler? That's pretty small, I hope that's for a compact 2 bed house with no big loads like a shower. Yeah expensive
its not a combi - you only have an oversized boiler to meet your instantaneous hot water needs. If your using a system boiler it can be vastly smaller sized to only your heat needs + a little.
It's not a combi. We have a pressurised system with a big tank upstairs. This includes a magnetic inline filter and Hive thermostat.
It’s not unreasonable surprisingly for BG, but BG do tend to be much more expensive than independents
A pal just had a new boiler installed for his daughter's 2 bedroomed house. Used a good local fella and was just under 2k all in.
We're on oil, a Worcester Greenstar Danesmoor external 18/25 boiler, fully fitted is £7632 😶
The fitting charge sounds a lot if it's a simple swap out... If your relocating the boiler or the pipework is a mess it sounds OK.
The boiler almost sounds too cheap though so...
Magnetic filter are worth it.. As above they collect any iron oxide that's floating around in the pipes to prevent blockages /restricted flow.
They are easy enough to service, just dismantle once every year or two and clean any gunk off it.
We did a comparison between BG and Boxt a couple of years ago and Boxt came out a bit cheaper. It also came with a longer warranty for the same price. BG still cover it under our Homecare, which reduced in price significantly on account of it being a new boiler.
That figure is in the same ballpark as we paid, though ours is a more powerful boiler.
The boiler almost sounds too cheap though so...
As pointed out to me when commenting on the size, it's not a combi, so cheaper.
Make the full quote look even more pricey!
£2400 for a Baxi 400 2.1 (5 year warrantee) inc magnetic filter in a different location. I dropped the central heating tails for the combi and the engineer altered gas and other pipework. This is South Wales. Baxi will only honour the warrantee if the system is flushed and a filter is fitted during install.
Scottish Gov'(possibly whole of Uk, i dont know) imitative currently in operation supplies a new A rated boiler, new improved radiators, loft and under floor insulation- as long as cellar access, ventilation systems for kitchen/bathroom, and all at no cost to the home owner, as long as you fall under certain conditions like age or receipt of certain benefits.
Dear old mumsie's just had this in a 3 bed house she owns, is 84 so gets some of those certain benefits.
Its made a massive difference to the heat in the house seriously reducing cold draughts.
Company is called Warmworks. Call them up. they come out, and if you do qualify its basically a toip rated boiler system complete which i'd reckon costs a pretty penny.
Perhaps not that many here would qualify, but their parents might, and its free and will make a huge difference to your bills.
Ideal boilers have a 12 year warranty 👍
I don't get how the Boxt model works, next day fitting ? I can't imagine there's an army of plumbers with nothing to do twiddling their thumbs waiting for a call ? If there are are they any good, .ost decent plumbers are chokker with work surely ?
Long story short, I had the boiler replaced 12 months ago. Including a Hive system I didn't want it cost me £2k from a local company. Baxi, 5yr warranty.
When ours packed up or rather a flue part was unobtainable, we got prices from Boxt but went with local recommended team, think it was around £2.5k for system boiler 18 months ago. They've just quoted another friend & were £2k cheaper than next nearest quote 🤨
Boxt works on a tender system .
You order through Boxt , they put out the tender to a load of plumbers who have signed up with Boxt.
They then decide if the £500 odd Boxt pay them for a day to fit it can be done within their existing jobs or not .
If they have time then they agree to do the job on such and such date and they crack on with it. I guess if no - one replies then BOXT increase the day rate till someone bites
May 2024 Ideal 3kw combi fitted. At same time old back boiler and tanks in loft removed. Magnetic inline filter fitted too.
Local, recommended plumber £2100.
**PRICE DROP** BAXI ASSURE 15kw SYSTEM BOILER & CHEMICALS 7750794 Erp | eBay UK
plus fitting incl system flush and mag filter for around £600 - £800, loads of ads on ebay from Gas safe plumbers .
Regarding long warrantees, most manufacturers T&C's go something like:
- At the end of each 12 month period, the boiler must be serviced by a Gas Safe registered engineer. Should this condition not be met the boiler warranty will lapse.
ASSETS.CTFASSETS.NET Ours did that and they then refused to count their engineer having to come out and fix it towards the end of the first 12 months as a valid service, which I thought was a bit rich given that they had the thing in pieces.
Our Boxt plumber was quite good but not electrically certified, a second chap turned up to install the hive system. The plumber installed the magnetic filter and made sure the pipework met updated standards (fitted the bypass pipework to allow all radiators to have TRV's installed). Total cost was around £4k but we had 3 radiators replaced in that total, getting rid of the last 1970's rads.
Could get a heat pump for that with the £7,500 grant.
IMHO, that's a lot of money for a straight swap.
How long will it take? A day for one competent installer, I'd have thought
I haven't had a boiler replaced for a while, but it's not rocket science. How on earth can they justify the extra 430+655.50 on top of the 1513.30 installation??
We went through BOXT as ours completely died & finding a reliable decent local plumber has been difficult.
The idea of being without hot water for several week didn't appeal in the slightest.
The service from them was spot on to be fair - the plumbers turned up when they said they would (a minor miracle in itself) & the new boiler was installed quickly. Maybe we did pay over the odds a bit, but they were cheaper than several other similar services but being able to order it on a Saturday online without speaking to anyone & have the installers turn up on the Tuesday was worth it for us.
Hive thermostat is a POS. Be better off with the manufactures system.
It seems expensive to me for a straight swap, but we had our boiler replaced 4 years ago now so prices are probably higher.
We had a 30kw Ideal boiler installed & part of the install was to take the old one out of the kitchen, re-route all of the pipework and have the new one installed in the airing cupboard upstairs. We also had the water tank taken out as the old one was a system boiler & the new one is a combi. Putting it in the airing cupboard meant the additional expense of having a condensate pump installed (noisy - not recommended & since removed) & the flue having to be routed into the loft & through the roof.
In total it was just under 3 days work to remove all the old stuff, re-do the pipe runs, fit & commission the new one. We had a recommended gas engineer do the work & I think it came to something around £3200. That was with a Google Nest thermostat (which is shite).
We recently had the boiler replaced at our rental house, I think it was about £2000 - £2200 (my wife sorted it).
But its a small 2 bed, end of terrace, so not sure if that changes the cost/type of boiler required.
Sorry for such a vague answer!!
What makes the Hive thermostat shite? I love ours - being able to control the heater & set schdules easily from my phone saves me such a headache
Hive's ace, until the internet goes off and screws the whole thing.
We had a new combi fitted late last year by someone we know and trust. He gave us four options ranging from £1800 to £3200 and we went with the 30kw Valliant for around £2500. Straight swap for what was there but they had to replace all the drainage pipes. Came with the magnetic filter which you need for the warranty and Hive. We're really happy with it as the shower now keeps a consistent flow even in freezing conditions and it's just an all-round upgrade on the one we had before.
What makes the Hive thermostat shite?
It keeps losing connectivity (and it took me weeks to get it connected mostly reliably in the first place, and I'm a nerd). The thermostat can't see the receiver 5m away unless the hub is halfway between the two, something the previous old-school wireless thermostat had no problems with. Once it goes you have to pull the battery to reconnect it.
It seems to make up temperatures, it claims to be 20' when it's fleeing and 18' when I've got sweat dripping off my sneck.
Using Alexa to turn it on has a default temperature and there's no way I can find of changing this.
The old system had an on/off button, great for my technophobe partner. Turning Hive off is "press dial to wake / tap menu button / click 'heat' / rotate dial to 'off' / click dial to select." How is this progress? Douglas Adams is spinning in his grave.
Hive thermostat is a POS. Be better off with the manufactures system.
That's your experience, mine differs in that it has worked flawlessly since installation. Hub in living room, thermostat in hallway and boiler controller in a cupboard upstairs. I let the TRV's control the demand for heat, water is on the thermostat settings.
Oh they work and yes seeing a schedule is easy but they are dumb not smart. There is no fancy control logic, they are literally an app connected version of your basic timer. That and you have to pay a subscription to see temperature history etc. Compared to the valiant control system on our new boiler they are a toy. I can see all sorts of information about the system, it'll notify me if an issue is detected and I can tweak the heat curves etc. There is detailed energy usage (split between heating and water) and much more.
Have you looked into heat pump suitability for your house? I'd certainly way it up as an option given you're spending all that money anyway.
Just paid £2400 for a Vaillant ecoFIT 35kw, mag filter & install in south manc with a trusted independent plumber.
That install cost looks insane.
£2700 to remove the old one then supply and fit a new Sime Giulia 30kw Combi boiler plus the usual flush, magnetic, inhibitor stuff in Sheffield.
just back from sorting mums hive that had lost connection, what a ball ache to get everything connected again. switch off boiler unplug hub take out batteries of thermostat and repeat and repeat and repeat, nope.....ended up doing factory reset. tis a POS indeed
our Tado just works
I was wondering if the Hive would be a PITA or not. I hate apps and tech when they make things more unreliable and tedious than a simple on/off switch.
Loads of people in our street have those Octopus heat pump things. I could ask around and see how they're getting on with them.
Loads of people in our street have those Octopus heat pump things. I could ask around and see how they're getting on with them.
There's a bit in the Guy Martin prog about heat pumps.
Their effectiveness relies heavily on the rads and pipework. It can take hours to set a system up and that's if it's plumbed well.
By all means go for it, but get everything assessed first
You can pick one of those boilers up for around £1200. Add another £100-ish for a magnetic filter and a couple of £hundred for materials. If you think £1⁷00 is worthwhile labour then go ahead.
FWIW, when I was fitting boilers (7 years ago) I charged materials + £300/day for labour. A straight swap was easily done in one day. The prices mentioned in this thread are making me think about getting my GasSafe renewed...
ASHP work best with underfllor heating. Very high levels of insulation and the understanding that they run cold. Its not unusual for the rads to be below body temp and be 'on '. Getting your head around the unit running 24hrs a day and using things like external air temp compensation curves is a different way of heating.
You tend to need larger rads as the output temps from the ashp are much lower so the delta T and BTU are calculated at 30c , giivig much lower numbers.
stop repeating the myth that ASHP work best with high levels of insulation. ANY heating works best with high levels of insulation.
They don’t run cold, they are weather compensated, they match the flow to the requirements, as should all heating, new heating systems MUST be designed with low flow temperatures.
They work with underfloor heating, radiators, fan convectors (great if you want to add cooling) trench heaters, they can even work on 1 pipe heating systems.
I achieve SCOP of about 5.5 according to the data, even if it is out a bit and I’m achieving 4.5, then my system in a Victorian flat with no insulation and high ceilings using radiators firmly debunks all those mis held beliefs.
Furthermore we are averaging about 19p/kw for electricity by using tariffs wisely.
Loads of people in our street have those Octopus heat pump things. I could ask around and see how they're getting on with them.
There's a bit in the Guy Martin prog about heat pumps.
Their effectiveness relies heavily on the rads and pipework. It can take hours to set a system up and that's if it's plumbed well.
By all means go for it, but get everything assessed first
I saw that program, the engineer seemed to be balancing the system which is something you can do with any radiator system, but it's and odd thing to do when smart valves exist and you can direct the flow to the rooms you want.
stop repeating the myth that ASHP work best with high levels of insulation. ANY heating works best with high levels of insulation.
But is it not the case that you need a certain amount of insulation in order to it to be viable?
E.g. I am currently sat next to a fairly large double panel/double convector rad, which has got 85 degree water coming into it (it's an oil boiler) - I would have thought (but I don't really know what I'm talking about!) that it's not going to be physically possible to accommodate a sufficiently large enough radiator to handle a 30 degree flow temp (or whatever a heat pump outputs).
Jamz first thing, is that radiator correctly sized in the first place, my guess is it will be oversized.
You can get very big rads now even triple panel, or sometimes you have to add an extra one.
Modern heat pumps produce higher temps quite easily, especially those that use R290 for refrigerant, yes the lower the flow temperature the more efficient it will be, but 50 deg. for a rad system isn’t unreasonable. Remember though that 50 deg. temperature will only be needed when it is at -3 externally.
So you would probably be able to use a heat pump with radiator upgrades most likely. Sometimes those upgrades make it not economically sensible to change, but it could be done. However if you upgrade your insulation then your current heating system will be more efficient.
Worth considering though with better insulation, your radiators maybe oversized then your boiler may cycle on and off a lot more which isn’t a good idea for both efficiency and longevity of the boiler.