After our last annual service, SSE have condemned our boiler (Ideal Classic RS250) due to high emissions and a broken flue seal. They of course want to sell us a shiny new boiler, thermostat, cylinder… the lot at a cost of £4000.
Now I know the flue seal can be replaced, but is there anything that can be done about the high emissions?
Or does it mean it has reached the end of its life?

I really cannot afford 4k right now!

mend the flue seal and accept its not to current standards?

Just live with it? As long as the emissions are outside rather than inside, I’d just keep using it.

ask around for a recomended independant and get them in for a second opinion and a quote for what needs changing …….

Ill never accept the opinion of any of them folks working for the big 6 on their “boiler insurance” packages …. unless its under 5 years old it invariably comes up as “parts unavailible new boiler required”

If its your own home, how can they condem your boiler??

Fair enough if its rented accommodation you need a certificate but not in your own home…

Im not saying its safe, but of course they are going to say you need a new one.

Get a second opinion from a local Gas Safe independent engineer. Replacement, (if necessary) would typically be £2k at most.

That Helplink thing that Johnny Ball advertises looks like a reasonable scheme on the face of it, especially if you’re already paying SSE for a maintenance scheme.

edit – and they can condemn it if considered dangerous. They’ll just lock the gas supply off until repaired and retested.

NB I can still get spares for my 25 yr old boiler and intend to keep it going as long as I can……

We had our boiler replaced for eco combi unit, (Valiant or other good one from memory) a load of pipework and new thermostat valves on all rads. in our old house a couple of years ago for just over 2k so that quote seems v.expensive, unless you live in a mansion and need a huge boiler 😉
&
+1 for getting a couple of other quotes

What should you do?

Are SSE upto their old tricks of misleading customers again?

Get a second opinion for a start.

Get a local gas engineer to service it, replace the seal etc.

The first and last time I let one of those idiots into my home he quoted me 5k for a boiler swap and said that was ‘cheap’ with their special offers and I couldn’t trust gas engineers who weren’t from big professional outfits etc etc.

If its your own home, how can they condem your boiler??

Fair enough if its rented accommodation you need a certificate but not in your own home…

Of course they can.

If it’s dangerous they will either issue you with an “at risk” or “immediate danger” notice and ask for permission to shut off the appliance and make it safe.

If they define it as “immediate danger” and you refuse permission to shut it off. They will inform National Grid, who will (very quickly) send out a team to dig up the gas pipe to your house, and cap it off. You will also be sent a large bill for the work carried out.

is there anything that can be done about the high emissions?

…service it regularly. I think they owe you money.

They will inform National Grid, who will (very quickly) send out a team to dig up the gas pipe to your house, and cap it off. You will also be sent a large bill for the work carried out.

Seems very odd given they can just cap the inlet pipe to the meter and save a load of digging….

footflaps – Member
NB I can still get spares for my 25 yr old boiler and intend to keep it going as long as I can.

Me too. The gas man from my road told me so. And said he has spare parts from replacing the others in the road. 🙂

Seems very odd given they can just cap the inlet pipe to the meter and save a load of digging….

That’s what they do if you refuse to allow them to make the appliance safe by capping the supply.

They stop the supply before it enters your boundary.

Came back from holiday to a condemned boiler . New gas engineer came to fix the diverter valve, which he did ( allegedly ) and cleaned out the HE . Same gasfix engineer then slapped a condemned sticker on it and fiddled with many sensors to nobble it .

I retuen to a disgruntled tennant and an email fromgas engineer #1 saying boiler leaking into electrics and if there is a gas leak it might explode. If there is a gas leak it might explode with or without a water leak elsewhere in the boile.

Call in old reliable gas engineer .He spends 40 mins checking everything , the leaks are years old. copper pipe staining with green copper sulphate salts and no moisture. Re pressurises system , fiddles with some valves , fires up boiler a few times and says nowt wrong with it . Peels off condemned sticker .

Get a phone call 3 days later from new guy . About £1900 for a new one and I can do it this week . hhhmmmm “No thanks just bill me for the works completed.”

Diverted valve still no worky so dont know if he even bothered.

I just service the boiler myself, a whole load less hassle.

footflaps – Member
I just service the boiler myself, a whole load less hassle.
POSTED 25 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

Careful now, the gas safe lot don’t like it when you admit to being clever enough to actually carry out preventative servicing… You’ll blow the street off the map don’t you know…

Careful now, the gas safe lot don’t like it when you admit to being clever enough to actually carry out preventative servicing…

Not a problem if you are actually clever enough to do it.

Plenty people think they are, when they aren’t. But they still try it, and that can cause issues that don’t just affect them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9362662/Oldham-explosion-handyman-who-mended-boiler-arrested-over-death-of-Jamie-Heaton-2.html

But if you serviced it yourself you would not know of the high emissions.
The only way you would find that is with an analyser, of course you’ve got one of those, with its current calibration certificate?

I attended a boiler that was only a few years old that had such high CO readings it shut my analyser down. Someone had been playing with the air throttle on the boiler and caused a potentially dangerous situation.

I would recommend that you get another opinion, preferably not from a firm that probably rewards its engineers to condemn boilers.

The Classic is a good boiler, very simple, especially yours with no fan not many things to go wrong. Poor combustion is likely to be causing the problem and that should be able to be rectified.

note: re that link to Telegraph and sad death of Jamie Heaton wasn’t a result of a bad DIY job…

He cut two gas pipes in his house because his girlfriend had left him and taken their children, the court heard.

Avoid these big nationals. You’ll get a replacement for 1/3 of that quote.

Careful now, the gas safe lot don’t like it when you admit to being clever enough to actually carry out preventative servicing… You’ll blow the street off the map don’t you know…

All the service instructions are in the manual, so anyone with half a brain cell can follow them.

As for high CO, if its venting in the house then it would trigger the CO detector and if it’s venting CO to the outside I somehow doubt it can create enough to increase the CO content of the western hemisphere high enough to cause asphyxiation…

As for high CO, if its venting in the house then it would trigger the CO detector and if it’s venting CO to the outside I somehow doubt it can create enough to increase the CO content of the western hemisphere high enough to cause asphyxiation…

This demonstrates exactly why DIY gas work is such a bad idea, for one you are relying on a CO detector being both fitted & working – far better that the problem be tackled at source, secondly even if it is being vented externally it is still an indication of poor combustion that at best means low efficiency & increased sooting but could well indicate a more serious problem.

For the OP a decent local boiler engineer will either fix the problem or quote at least half the price that £4k figure.

Going back to OP (and disregarding the usual debate about whether or not to do gas work yourself) the Classic is a good boiler for what it is, nowt to go wrong with it in a major way. A flue seal is likely to be available for a few quid, depending on age some of them used glass rope. Pretty much all spares are still available for them so ignore SSE guy.

If you do go for a new boiler you’d have a choice of sticking to heat only and a cylinder like you have or going for a combi boiler. A combi will be more expensive as it involves a lot more pipework.

I’ve just had a Vaillant boiler fitted and the system converted from vented to unvented, so new cylinder and all the associated other gubbins, plus re-location of the boiler, for about £2300, so the OP should be able to do much better for a straight boiler replacement than £4k.

Knowing how to do something and actually being able to do it are two very different things. Instructions almost always over simplify things, don’t offer any or much advice on how to do everything – they just cover the main steps and sequence of events, often miss out some vital intermediary steps as they assume the fitter has some basic fundamental knowledge, sometimes haven’t been updated to match the specific model you might have so the diagrams and steps might differ slightly and also don’t always specify all the checks, inspections and tests that should be carried out at various steps along the way. I’d happily tackle any gas plumbing job if I was able, but I wouldn’t want to be fiddling inside the boiler even though I fully understand what a boiler is, how it works, what the constituent parts are of a boiler. A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.

note: re that link to Telegraph and sad death of Jamie Heaton wasn’t a result of a bad DIY job…

Fair enough, as it turned out it wasn’t.

bad example aside, the point is still valid. Many people think they know what they are doing, but don’t.

As above “a little knowledge is dangerous”

Everyone seems to think they can do everyone else’s job these days. It’s only when big problems occur that they realise they actually can’t. And it’s too late by that time

This demonstrates exactly why DIY gas work is such a bad idea, for one you are relying on a CO detector being both fitted & working

You always are, just because a boiler is working 100% when its serviced doesn’t mean it always will be…..

secondly even if it is being vented externally it is still an indication of poor combustion that at best means low efficiency & increased sooting but could well indicate a more serious problem.

Both of which you can easily detect without gas flue analysis kit. Sooting is visually obvious when you clean the flue and poor efficiency will show up in the bills…

Both of which you can easily detect without gas flue analysis kit. Sooting is visually obvious when you clean the flue and poor efficiency will show up in the bills…

Eventually yes you can, but with flue gas analysis it is immediately apparent & hopefully rectified at source rather than left producing high CO over a period of time.

You always are, just because a boiler is working 100% when its serviced doesn’t mean it always will be…..

Yes it can but if it is done properly & tested you know it isn’t producing high CO straight after it has been “serviced”.

Both of which you can easily detect without gas flue analysis kit. Sooting is visually obvious when you clean the flue and poor efficiency will show up in the bills..

Ha… I’ve never tried to work out the efficiency of my boiler via the bills, there are too many variables. Especially if the boiler isn’t the only consumer of gas in the property.

Both of which you can easily detect without gas flue analysis kit. Sooting is visually obvious when you clean the flue and poor efficiency will show up in the bills…

Not necessarily.

High emmisions from a classic could well be a leak on the pilot assembly by the way. The pilot seal degrades over time, and passes unburnt gas into the combustion chamber. That’ll put the performance test through the roof.

Our 20+ year old boiler rather spectacularly killed itself with a very large bang and loads of smoke a couple of years back, but turned out it was an electrical failure rather than gas-related. It had taken out its entire control system. Good old independent cobbled together a replacement system from various bits, it’s still going with a few hiccups. Only downside is we can’t turn it off for more than a day as for some reason it won’t restart easily again, just kills the main circuit breaker repeatedly when you try – eventually will go though in the end. Got another couple of years out of it though, at least so pleased.

oh i m such a fool.. i fell for it hook line and sinker.. i took the training course 150 quid, bought the analyser 700 quid .. get the thing serviced every year at 80 quid..thought folks might appreciate it and gas safe said i couldnt do any other work without both.

hi reading says the gas isnt been burnt properly which means it produces carbon monoxide.. sure most boilers vent outdoors so no problem? unless of course your seal is dodgy or your flue is leaking or you had a go at cleaning it yourself and didnt quite get it back together properly ( screw left over anyone).. any of the above and as your central heating fires up whilst you sleep.. you could die.. no scarmongering but about 20 folks a year do just that..

your boiler isnt scrap though a good clean new seal and maybe a new valve and it ll be right as rain.. tell sse to sort it that is what yoou pay them for after all..

Just to add we replaced the early 80s boiler at my mothers with a new model a couple of years ago. It’s a biggish house in a very exposed location on a Calor gas tank so maybe not too typical but the new boiler has already paid for itself in reduced bills (even after taking into account the reduction in gas prices we have had in that period). It was old enough and inefficient enough (when new) that the government paid for a sizeable chunk of the replacement in a grant scheme that is available.