Hello,

just moved in to a new house and the combi bolier has packed up (about 4 weeks after moving in).

It's an Ideal Isar HE 24, and from Google it looks like the worst boiler in the world.

Anyway, I was thinking of using British Gas's fixed price repair service (£192) as this includes parts. Local firm qoutes £68 + vat first hour then £38 + vat per hour labour, then parts.

Local firm will be cheaper if it's not too complicated, but the shonkyness of the boiler suggests it might be cheaper to go with BG.

Any thoughts?

you want my advice, throw it out. They are the worse than shonky. Useless and shit back up, went to a launch about them years ago and they were trumpeting how thoroughly they tested these things, how reliable it will be etc! If the boards have gone (seem to remember this boiler has 2), sometimes you have to replace both of them which are in excess of £300.
Think I fitted a few, don't think any lasted longer than 5 years.

Good luck!

If the boilers more than say 5 years old I would sign up to BG's monthly scheme? £15 a month which includes an annual service, plus any repairs your boiler needs in its lifetime…. which sounds like your might need!

Best insurance policy I have ever taken out, more than paid for itself on a boiler I used to have

I have one and its shocking

Had the damn thing rebuilt at least twice by BG, must have cost them a fortune, far more than my yearly contributions

Not sure what its called, but one bit that should last years and is about 800 quid has leaked twice and needed replacing

If you keep the boiler go on their repair scheme, you will need it

either cut your losses now and replace it with something decent or (as above) sign up to BG maintainence contract – their engineers will at least know the issues with this shile of pite inside out because when they were first launched we were fitting thousands of them, until someone noticed that breakdowns had gone off the graph thanks entirely to the isar and its equally crap cousin the icos. at which point they were dropped overnight and BG have been throwing parts at them ever since

sorry to hear you've inherited one – i sometimes wonder how many people must think "the boilers playing up I know lets sell the house"

Be wary of the BG Homecare if you have an old boiler that is fine as it is, but not up to current standards. They will replace the faulty parts free, but any large jobs will mean the rest of the system has to be brought up to current standards, any work required for this will come out of your own pocket! When we had our last annual service I asked the guy if our level of homecare covered the hot water cylinder (for corrosion of the coil etc) he said yes, but at the same time we'd have to correct this, this and this, and thats all chargeable.

I've still got the homecare, but downgraded it to a lower product. Boiler is getting close to 20 years old…