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In process of buying an oil heated house. Boiler is a relic so needs replacing. I've had a heating company round and they've recommended moving the boiler outside. Free's up interior space & gets round the current below spec ventilation & flue.
I was a little surprises to be recommended putting the the hot thing which heats the house in a cold place e.g. outside! Any experience/views out there? Model in question: "Firebird C26 Slim-line External model condensing oil boiler with a Sedbuk Band “A” rating for efficiency."
When you say 'outside', I presume undercover in some outbuilding or other. If so, sounds like a good idea to me. The only issue I can think of is extreme cold in winter, but I presume they know what they are talking about. The issue would be with the fuel waxing in the supply pipes, but the tank is outside anyway and SBO(standard burning oil), RBO(regular burning oil), Kerosene (all the same thing) will normally be treated by your supplier with anti waxing aditives in winter. Infact, I'm not sure that Kerosene (RBO/SBO) requires winter aditives, like Diesel/Gas Oil does.
You'll be pleased it's outside when a heating eng lets fuel oil spill on the floor.
Stick with the old one & put in an LPG fuel cell micro-CHP when they hit the market in a few years.
Quite common these days, parents just moved theirs outside. Freed up loads of space and it moved what can be quite a noisy and smelly beast out of the house.
Can confirm when I say outside, really does mean outside. Need to build small concrete base by backdoor and then put boiler on it ("complete with its own weatherproof cabinet"). And yep keeps the smelly oily stuff totally out of the house which can only be good thing.
Next step then is to save some cash up for some solar thermal on the roof!
Firebird boilers are shit. thread closed.
mollyion - can you be a bit more precise?
The house we had in Cornwall had it's oil fired boiler outside (in what I think was the old outside toilet) - you really dont want the boiler inside anyway, they bloody stink.
oil boilers should not stink. if it does it is either an oil leak or poor combustion.
External oil boilers are very common now, not used Firebird, try to stick to Worcester or Grant.
Not too sure about LPG fuel cell, an air to water heat pump is worth exploring though.
The house we have in Ireland now has the boiler outside, as mentioned it comes in a weatherproof metal surround and is just outside the back door. I thought it a bit odd at first too but we've had no problems with ours and it does free up a lot of space.
Mine was in the outside bog. Excellent place for drying and storing wet m/c gear etc. Build a shed round it.
We had a new oil boiler a couple of years ago. It's a Wallstar. Installs inside (very slimline) with the guts accessable via a hatch from the outside. This means the chappie services it from outside keeping any soot/smells/oiks outside the house.
So far, so good.
I fitted a HRM "through the wall" oil boiler and it's been ok. The burner can be serviced from the outside so we don't need to be in when it's serviced. It also takes up very little space internally.