Hi,
We have a warm air heating system. We live in a 1970's terrace, and most of our neighbours have ripped these out and put in gas central heating with radiators. Our system in new (well 2007, but i know some systems are from the 70's)..it seems relatively efficient.
We've had British gas out every year in the last 5 since we have lived here to service and they have only once known how to service it, this year, they were 'quiet' so did an amazing job of taking it all apart and cleaning it. There was so much muck in it, and afterwards it ran a lot better but even the chap who did it said he wouldn't normally have the time. All the other years they didn't do this and barely understood it (on their own admission)... we even had Nordec out for a service who are air heating specialists, and they were terrible.. barely did anything.
Why are we paranoid? We've been told that they can be very dangerous. When our neighbours hear we still have this system (a Johnson and Starley) they go a bit pale.... if the pipes get cracks they can spew out Carbon monoxide (we have alarms)..... you wouldn't be able to know this. Every time someone buys a house in our street, if it has the old system the first thing they do it rip it out.... BUT... our house has concrete floors downstairs and was obviously designed for air heating not radiators.... I've heard that replacing system could be 3.5k-7k.... the lower end we could just afford, but not the upper.
Help! What should we do??!! I feel like I've been going round in circles with this one.
btw we have a 3 bed terrace, with one main reception room, so we are thinking we probably need 6 or 7 rooms doing... any ideas on costs from people who have had warm air heating recently converted
are there any other alternatives (e.g electric radiators?)
We were also wondering whether we could install boiler for water and a couple of radiators, but leave air heating in bulk of rooms (it's only in 4 rooms anyway, but other rooms are rarely cold except bathroom.
thanks