Completed in early April 2009, this customer’s house, on the Sanderstead/Purley borders (Surrey, UK) had an aged Potterton boiler removed and changed for a new wall hung Worcester Bosch 24Ri.

Who left that van there?

The new boiler was a third of the size and weight of the old unit, but had exactly the same power output.

The old cast iron unit had been very reliable, but extremely wasteful of gas.  Old floorstanding cast iron units rarely give an efficiency of greater than 65%. 

A new high efficiency boiler will achieve around 90% efficiency.

In other words, comparing the old boiler to the new one, for every £1.00 you spend on gas, 25p is immediately lost, forever.

And of course, if you are using less gas, your household emissions will lower, and there will be considerably more gas left for everyone else.

Inside the utility room

The only losers are the people selling you the energy in the first place…….. 

Getting back to our installation picture file, the old boiler had an enormous balanced flue which we painstakingly bricked up to match the existing….. if you look closely you may be able to see.

Completed job, spot the brickwork remedial work

Our customer’s boiler is warranted through our preferential arrangement with Worcester Bosch, until April 2014.

Our customer owns a terraced town house in London SE19.

It was late when we finished

He had considered a solar hot water system in the loft, as he wanted to minimise his family impact on the environment;  with solar hot water it is important to maximise the hot water storage, or you quickly run out of solar heated water and have to use the boiler.

Unfortunately, the design of these properties leaves a low headroom in the loft, restricting the size of cylinder, and there is limited weight capacity for large volumes of water.

So, instead, he decided to fit the Vaillant ecoTEC+ 937 hybrid combination boiler.  The wall hung unit comprises an 837 combi with a set of hot water storage tanks built in a pod at the back.  This makes the boiler quite large and heavy (getting on for the size of a washing machine), but it delivers a superb performance of 20 litres per min for the first 200 litres of drawoff.

We fitted the new boiler on the brick gable wall and used a vertical flue system.  Five new radiators were also supplied and fitted, and we were fortunate to be able to use some existing ductwork from a warm air installation to hide most of the pipework.

New Vaillant 937 in the loft

The Vaillant 937 is a good alternative to an unvented cylinder and boiler in a medium sized house, because it takes up relatively little space.  Other similar solutions offered by Hot Water & Central Heating include the Worcester Highflow CDi range.

The house, located in Smallfield, near Gatwick, had a conventional heating system with a copper cylinder, water tank etc.  The old boiler had been mounted in a bedroom cupboard, which is always best avoided for noise reasons.

You can just see the new boiler flue on the roofline......

We fitted a new Worcester Bosch Greenstar 37CDi combination boiler in the loft space, on a custom made partition.

New 37Kw boiler mounted in loftspace

The Worcester boiler has a high hot water flow rate, which uses over 37Kw of power.  This necessitated a new gas pipe, which we connected via the existing external recessed meter housing and routed into the loft space.

We're pointing at our new gas connection

The new boiler system rendered the hot water cylinder and tanks redundant, leaving some useful space under the stairs for a cupboard.

New coats cupboard in the making (HW cylinder was located here)

Finally, we fitted the excellent Honeywell CM927 wireless thermostat unit to control the heating in the house.

Honeywell CM927 room thermostat

This house was in great internal condition with white carpets everywhere – heating installers hate white carpets!  But the owners made our chores a pleasure, even putting some of their own dust sheets down before we arrived!

Our customer lives in an area of Crystal Palace where the water supplier has in the last 12 months reduced the pressure in the mains.

The secret to successful showering is in the garage

This has resulted in a pressure just above 1bar on the lower ground floor;  this house is on 4 stories and there are bathrooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors.  The result was that the bath took ages to fill, the shower on the 3rd floor could not be used, and the shower on the 2nd floor was poor.

Protests to Thames Water from most of the residents in the immediate area did not result in satisfaction, because they were supplying over the statutory minimum pressure to the bottom floor of the property.

Hot water in these properties is supplied through a Gledhill Systemate III heatstore.

Hot Water & Central Heating were asked to provide a solution for the problem, retaining the existing boiler and heatstore.

We fitted a TCWS Charger and Mainsboost system in the lower floor garage.  This innovative patented unit consists of a pumpset and an accumulator.  The pumpset uses less than 12 litres per minute and incorporates anti backflow protection, enabling it to be connected directly to the water main.

TCWS Charger and Mainsboost in garage

It is very quiet in operation, and charges a large accumulator on a ‘trickle’ basis to replicate the performance of an accumulator on a 3bar main.

The Pump incorporates programming to manage the duty cycle and the maximum/minimum pressure.  Once commissioned, the system needs no further adjustment and will continue to run in a power cut.  If the pumpset fails, an automated bypass allows the mains to still enter the property without user intervention.

If you have a water supply problem, and are in our area (see our main ‘areas covered’ button at the top of the page) we can advise you.

Following commissioning, our customer was very happy with the results, which now means that all bathrooms are fully back in operation.  We have already been asked to provide two other nearby households with quotations for similar systems.

Stop Press:  Following the success of this installation, Hot Water & Central Heating have received an order to install an identical system to the house next door in May 2009.

We spent 3 days in this loft

Our customer in Purley had a boiler fitted by Hot Water & Central Heating in 2005, and was in the process of having a bathroom refitted. 

Vaillant ecoTEC installed in 2005 - as good as new

Their old gravity water system cylinder was in the way of a new shower enclosure.

Old gravity cylinder - recycling beckons

We worked alongside their bathroom installers (Visions) to swap over from a vented bathroom setup to a new unvented cylinder in the loft. 

Tim holding up the uniSTOR 260

Our customer is a retired chemical engineer, and he specified one of the first Vaillant weather compensated heating systems when we originally installed his Vaillant ecoTEC 630 boiler in 2005.

Naturally, he decided to go for a Vaillant unvented cylinder, in this case the uniSTOR 260.  He now has what Vaillant describe a ‘total system solution’.  This is where the boiler controls know the precise hot water temperature in the cylinder, and modulate the boiler output according to the scale of the task. 

In a Vaillant total system solution there is no separate timer and programmer, all the heating and hot water is controlled from a single wall mounted controller.  We had fitted a Vaillant VRC400 back in 2005, but recently this has been superceded by the new VRC430, and as this was an inexpensive upgrade, our customer chose to have the newer model fitted at the same time.

Latest Vaillant controller was installed

The uniSTOR was sited in the loft space, involving a considerable amount of pipework and subsequent lagging.

There was a surprising amount of pipework in this job

We also upgraded the water supply from the garage, to give the best possible performance at the taps.

New water pipe (insulated) in garage on its way to the loft

Connected to a suitable water supply, unvented hot and cold water systems give a performance level similar to that obtained from a shower pump without the noise and unreliability associated with the latter.

Finished job

They have to be installed by a qualified installer and the safety devices suitably installed;  in our case, we ran the emergency discharge pipe in 28mm copper in a discrete corner of the property, rather than using the nearer back of the house, which would have been unsightly.

Discharge pipe was run at side of house

There was a time when a backboiler (a gas fire with a hidden cast iron central heating boiler hidden inside the fireplace) was the height of fashion.

Unfortunately, the front fires now look dated, but more importantly, the bit at the back is usually only 60%-65% efficient in its use of your expensive gas.

Our customer in Pembury (near Tunbridge Wells, Kent) had decided it was time to invest in a new energy efficient boiler, and from the 3 quotes, he chose Hot Water & Central Heating for the task.

The boiler was to be moved from the lounge to a utility room area, in the process of being refurbished.

We suggested the Worcester Bosch 18Ri conventional boiler, which has an efficiency of over 90%, and comes with a full 5 year warranty when fitted by Hot Water & Central Heating.

The new boiler

The Worcester 18Ri has a depth of only 280mm, meaning that it will fit in a standard wall cupboard – which is handy, because our customer will be having new units on this wall.   The boiler will be completely hidden when renovations are completed.

In this case, we were fortunate to have the boiler on an outside wall, which made fitting so much simpler.

New boiler location, from the outside, showing neat flue outlet

The house, located in leafy Caterham, Surrey, was built in the early 60s and was heated by a warm air ducted system.  In common with many installations of this period, some rooms had no direct ducting and relied on leaving the doors open. 

The subject of this post

Our customer wished to use the large cupboard currently occupied by the warm air system for storage.  They also wanted a mains pressure delivery of hot and cold water, and minimum wastful stored hot water.

Warm air cupboard after removal of old heater, new pipes shown

We suggested the new Worcester Bosch Highflow 440CDi.  This is a floor mounted unit, recently updated from the Highflow 440.  With identical dimensions to a washing machine, the new Highflow has a new control panel and has more flexible flue outlet arrangements.

Worcester Bosch Highflow 440CDi - nearly completed

The Highflow 440 incorporates a small internal unvented store of hot water, which enables it to deliver up to 20 litres of hot water a minute.  Being able to be sited under a worktop, it is a very neat space efficient solution.

Finished!

It is always difficult fitting radiators in a property formerly fitted with warm air, because there are pipes to run.  In this property there was a solid ground floor, but we found ways to minimise the visual impact of pipe runs.

Vogel & Noot Vienna Line radiator

Our customer agreed to specify our preferred Vogel and Noot radiators, which have a modern neat panelled appearance.  The single panel versions fit very close to the wall indeed, minimising visual impact in the room.  Honeywell radiator valves were used throughout, as usual.

Pipework can often be hidden on the other side of the wall

The new Highflow 440 CDi can be used with the Worcester outside plume management kit, which we fitted to take the flue output to a satisfactory high level discharge point, where it was unlikely to be a nuisance.

The new plume management kit now available on the 440CDi comes in useful here! That's a lot of steam.

The hot water cylinder and water tanks were removed, the Worcester Highflow now manages the supply of heating and hot water for the entire property singlehanded.

As a Worcester A+ installer, our customer enjoys a 5 year parts and labour warranty on his new boiler.  Our experience with previous Worcester Highflow models suggests he is unlikely to need it, but nevertheless it is covered until 2014!

Our customer had an old Glowworm boiler which was in a position preventing a planned extension to the house.

The object of our works, on the Purley/Coulsdon borders

HWCH Ltd were recommended by another customer, and we suggested replacing the boiler with a modern Vaillant ecoTEC 630 system boiler.

The Vaillant ecoTEC+ 630 is a 30Kw boiler (102,000 BTu output) with an integral 2 speed pump, all mounted in a modern near-silent enclosure.

We give 5 year warranties on our Vaillant boilers, which, along with the recommendation, no doubt helped win us this contract.

New Vaillant boiler in utility room

The customer had originally carried his own central heating installation over 20 years ago, and a very fine job he had made of it.  In fact, it looked nothing like a typical DIY installation, we were very impressed.

We relocated the boiler from a WC to a utility room, and provided modern programmable Honeywell thermostatic controls, which enabled the house to be zoned into two areas.

Wiring up the new Honeywell zone valves

The boiler will be covered by a 5yr parts and labour warranty until 2013.  If your Vaillant boiler installer does not give you this, perhaps you should be calling us for a quote!

ºOur customer has a large 3 storey Victorian detached property in Dulwich.

In common with many houses in this area, an old gravity fed hot and cold water system using loft tanks was employed. 

Our customer wished to gradually update his house to new mains pressure fed bathrooms, using European high pressure taps, and wisely didn’t fancy the prospect of shower pumps.

He also wanted to make use of the loft space currently occupied by the large water tanks, and remove the old copper hot water storage cylinder on the 1st floor to make room for another shower.

Our brief was to design the plant to deliver his requirements, all within a cellar a little under 6 feet tall.

In the cellar we found a venerable Kidd Boiler, dating from 1990, so this was retained as it probably has a good few years of life left in it.   Launched in 1982, it was an early condensing high efficiency design that remarkably few ‘heating engineers’ have heard of to this day, even though it was probably the first commercial British condensing boiler.  Still made today, we still fit them!

Kidd Boiler Model 2 Gas (now available in white!)

I commonly hear ‘how reliable’ someone’s old Potterton has been……….  if they had fitted a Kidd instead 20 years ago it would have been just as reliable but burnt just over half the fuel in the intervening 20 years.  Notables including the Highgrove Estate and Peter Gabriel were savvy enough to understand the importance of not wasting fuel back then, but that’s another story….

We had to boost the water flow rate from the 20 litres a minute provided by Thames Water to in excess of 40 litres per minute.  We did this with a stored water pressure vessel.

We then needed a hot water storage system that could fit below the low ceiling, but have a fast recovery time in the event of concerted use.  We looked into a heatstore, but the costs of having a special unit fabricated to meet the space restrictions were very high.  Also the Kidd Boiler does not modulate, so ideally we would need a heatstore with a 46Kw plate heat exchanger to enable the boiler to discharge its power in a long burn, rather than a protracted series of short cycles, which wastes energy needlessly.

We ended up specifying the ACV Smartline tank in tank ‘unvented’ cylinder instead.  To those of you who think of a Megaflo when unvented cylinders are mentioned, this is a World apart.

ACV cylinder cutaway

The stainless steel water cylinder containing your hot water is suspended within another steel cylinder containing the boiler heated water.  When the water is heated it is surrounded 360° by the boiler water, resulting in a very fast warm up time indeed. 

So our Kidd Boiler can discharge it’s full output of 46Kw into the ACV cylinder, resulting in a quick heat recovery period.

The ACV cylinder has another trick;  although it is an unvented cylinder, it is designed to store water at 80ºC, rather than the 60ºC usually used.  The reason we normally store hot water at 60C is that at temperatures above this, limescale is precipitated from the water and deposits scale.  The ACV inner cylinder is ribbed, and every water draw off causes a movement, this prevents scale from building up.  The electrical immersion heater is fitted to the other jacket, so never scales up.

The result is that we can store more hot water energy in an ACV cylinder than an equivalent sized alternative, and most boilers will work more efficiently when driving them. 

Water Boosting Vessel and ACV Smartline hot water unvented cylinder

The equipment was all mounted well below drainage level, so a Drainmaster high temperature compatible pumpset was fitted.  The Kidd Boiler used to disharge its condense into a plastic 2 gallon drum (nobody manufactured condensate pumps in the 80s and 90s, so this was a common bodge), but now it can use the Drainmaster, along with a soon to be fitted sink, washing machine and of course the emergency discharge from the unvented system.  The Drainmaster is a pump in a vented sump, and is hot water rated for these types of application.

The outside Kidd flue had been damaged by builders, so we commissioned a new hand welded item from Kidd Boilers  (Mr Kidd, as usual, had the original installation drawings on file)

Finally, the latest Honeywell programmable room heating controller (CM927) was added to the installation to bring it up to date.

Honeywell Programmable room thermostst

We think the showers are now almost too painful to get under……..  but some of our customers like them like that!

Period house in Warlingham, Surrey

Our client has a woodworking business and was constructing an imaginative barn type conversion for their property, with lots of oak beams in an unusual semi circular design.

Firstly, we installed a Heritage Cooker in the existing kitchen.  Fitted with brass trim and a Jade Green enamelled finish, it was also specified with body colour hotplate covers.

Heritage Cooker

This particular Heritage Cooker was a gas fired unit, most of the Heritages we fit are oil fired in very rural locations.

In common with all 3 oven Heritage units, the control panel concealed behind the upper left hand door enables the unit to be timed according to the user requirements. 

Showing hidden control panel

From cold, the Heritage is ready for cooking in as little as 25 minutes.  Try telling this to an AGA owner and they start getting very defensive.  Especially in the summer when their cooker is making the kichen intolerably hot and using completely unnecessary amounts of fuel!

An old Potterton boiler and associated hot water cylinder was removed, and a new Vaillant ecoTEC+ 937 hybrid combination boiler was installed in the extension, together with a new water main.

Vaillant 937

We have fitted lots of this model over the past 18 months.  ecoTEC937 uses a buffer store of preheated hot water, to give a performance of around 200 litres of hot in the first 10 minutes, all from a (large) wall hung boiler.  This is a boiler that is a viable alternative for a small unvented cylinder installation for water delivery, if there is only 25 litres per minute coming in the property.

Separate circuits were installed for the underfloor heating system in the extension and the main radiators in the house.

Underfloor heating and radio controls

The underfloor heating manifold (and electrical consumer unit above) will be concealed inside a larder kitchen unit later in the project.

The underfloor heating is fitted with the OJ electronics radio thermostat system, so our customer has 4 zones of independently controllable underfloor heating, plus a separately timed and programmable radiator system, giving 5 addressable zones of heating in the house.

All ready for Christmas 2008, and the floor tiler!