New Boiler Blues

I had a small amount of money come in from my mothers estate and had to decide what to do with it. While some was put away as a contingency fund I chose to replace the central heating boiler as it was old, noisy, inefficient and could have gone at any time. For me, a new boiler that would reduce the energy bills, have a 10 year guarantee and be reliable was a sensible prep.

After several days of due diligence and learning what the various specs quoted actually meant I had selected a short list of boilers. I then looked at instalation companies. I found a local one with good reviews, personal recommendations reasonable costs but not the cheapest.

Their surveyor came, looked at the old boiler and installation and gave me a quote inside my comfort zone. Three days later the fitter arrived on time and the new boiler was put in place and all was working.

A week or so later we noticed a small pool of water on the kitchen counter top by the wall under the boiler. There was a leak from one of the joints. A quick phone call and a fitter arrived the next day and found the leak, replaced the fibre washer, well actually put a fibre washer in where one should have been and all was well, for a few more days.

A week later, my wife was in the bathroom washing her hair when she gave a loud piercing scream. the boiler had cut out and the was was freezing cold. We turned taps on and off and the boiler fired up. The sudden cutting off of hot water became more frequent and I again called the company. They said that it sounded like a fault with the actual boiler so they contacted the manufacturers. 20 minutes later the manufacturers called and booked their engineer in for 8 am on Monday morning.

He came into the kitchen, removed the tiled panel and looked at the boiler. He snorted and looked further then turned to me "You didn't install this yourself did you sir?"

The whole system was a complete bodge!! The cold feed was connected to the hot out valve so the in line water softener was treating the hot water flowing OUT of the boiler not the cold going in. The hot water came out of the other pipe so the water flow through the boiler was reversed. Thus the flow sensor had a hard time detecting the demand.

The gas connection was a 15 mm pipe which was odd as the gas pipe coming into the property immediately below the boiler was the correct 22 mm pipe. The fitter had used a reducng adapter to fit a length of 15 mm pipe to the gas main then another adapter at the top to connect the 15 mm to the boiler!!

The electrical system had the wrong fuse, 13 amp instead of 3, the earth wire was not connected and was hanging free.

The drainage pipe was copper not plastic so liable to corrode and was not actually connected to the drain, just dribbled down the inside of our kitchen wall.

I phoned the installation company and read the boiler engineers report to them.

All companies can make a mistake, can hire the wrong person. I judge a company by how they fix things when they do go wrong.
I spoke to them at 9 am and by 10 am their senior fitter and his "boy" arrived and examined the installation. within a few seconds he agreed with the engineer and all the pipework had to come out and be redone, properly.

Six hours later we had a fully working and checked system, I had a £500 refund, my wife had a bunch of flowers and a bottle of whisky for us to share. the installation companies response had been very rapid, no quibble or hassle and they cleaned up the kitchen after themselves.
The first "fitter" no longer worked for them and all the 12 installations he had done were now being checked.

I now have a good quality system that should see us through the foreseeable future with lower bills. For my family and I this is a sensible prep.

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New Boiler Blues