fireplace back boiler

[thecherryontop]

Viewed a house yesterday that we are very much interested in despite it needing a lot of modernisation... It has a fireplace that has a back boiler and an old looking fire at the front of it -the estate agent wasn't much help and just said that the fire didn't work but the boiler did.

Has anyone had experience of a boiler like this? It's the first I had seen or heard of it.

Would it be very costly to have the boiler moved and replaced or would it be best to replace with some type of wood burning fire?

All ideas/help appreciated as this must be factored in if we do bid.

Do you mean a gas one, probably a Baxi?

Do my amazement you can still get parts fir them, and I think new gas fires to go on the front.

Or do you mean a coal grate with a back boiler?

How does the boiler work if the fire doesn't? When I lived a house with a fire and back boiler, the boiler got heat from the fire.

Is there any other form of heating for the house or water? When we had one it was the only way of heating either and was a massive PITA. Our insurance wouldn't allow us to have the fire on when we were out, since it took 2 or 3 hours to warm up, we were cold a lot. Very cold.

Is there gas to the property, or at least a main near by?

We had an old baxi back boiler with a fire. A part of the fire that controlled the gas flow broke so we could not use it but the boiler worked fine. We replaced it with a new combi boiler in the loft. Cost about 3k.

We have a back boiler with ugly fire front. We moved here in 2006 and have managed fine with it for that time, it has never broken down and it doesn't cost much more to run.
We are replacing it shortly with a combination in the loft. New boiler is about £800. We will leave the old boiler in the fireplace capped off.

My MIL has that arrangement. It is a very inefficient boiler and never seems to provide hot water for more than one person even after being on for ages.

Thanks all so far... I'm going back today to see it again so will find out answers to some of the questions raised -thank you for asking them as I wouldn't have had a clue. Good to have an idea of prices also.

while you're there, try to run the kitchen cold tap into a bucket, time it, and calculate how many litres per minute you get. Or the garden tap if more convenient.

Also get an idea of how big the hot-water cylinder is. It might be about 18" wide and 36" or 42" high.

These will be useful to know when you are considering an upgrade.

Thank you -I'm back and have just seen this so didn't get a chance to measure -I did ask questions but they couldn't tell me the answers so will have to wait until they've spoken with the owners. I did previously run the kitchen tap but it was leaking so had to stop it.

we've got an old baxi back boiler. It's incredibly reliable so we can justify the cost of replacing it. I've been willing it to die for 10 years so we could get rid of the ugly gas fire. But it won't

Our gas bill is about £60 a month I. Average for our three bed semi. I don't think they're massively inefficient if you factor in the constant breakdowns that seem to happen with a modern boiler

We always have plenty of hot water. Set it to heat for a couple of hours from before you get up and again in the evening and we never run out

We have a baxi (really REALLY old) and it has done us proud in the 6 years we've been here. The fireplace is fugly, but I've just got my table in front of it so you can't see it anyway. Our combined gas and electricity bill is £70pcm (3 bed terrace), and we always have plenty of hot water - even more since we upgraded our HW cylinder.