Paging PigletJohn + other plumbers...

[friskybivalves]

It's a boiler question . Quite a pedestrian one I think.

We are gutting and refurbing our unmodernised 3-bed terrace house. It currently has an oldie-but-goldie Worcester Bosch combi. I love a combi because I hate having to plan ahead when i might want to have a bath. And hate thought of heating water unnecessarily. Love being able to turn on the tap and go. Drives me mad in houses when HW runs out half way thru washing up or bath.

However post refurb we will have one bathroom plus a shower en-suite in the former loft. Still three beds and wet UFH on ground floor.

Our builder is suggesting we get a new Vaillant 630+ with a HWC and I wondered if you might walk me through whether that's a good idea. We have decent water pressure and no space for a tank. Is there any combi that would be powerful enough? I don't think we would often be using both showers at the same time but maybe when the Dcs turn into teenagers that will change.

Thank you for any advice

An unvented cylinder can give unsurpassed hot water. It is quieter than a combi, smaller, and more economical. Some people deny that a conventional or system boiler, being simpler, breaks down less often than a combi of equivalent quality, and lasts longer.

The amount of water flow is important.

Fill a bucket at your kitchen sink cold tap (and your utility room and garden tap, if you have them). Time it. How many litres per minute do you get?

What colour and diameter is your incoming water supply pipe?

Thank you so much for coming back. We don't have a utility room
But I will do the bucket test in the kitchen. Um, I'm embarrassed to say I don't know where the cold water feed is. Under the kitchen sink ?

possibly. It might also be visible at an outdoor stopcock or meter under an iron lid in the pavement or your front garden. Usually the pipe runs in a straight line from where the front gate used to be when the house was built, to where the kitchen sink used to be when the house was built.

Numbskulls like to pay paving or tarmac over the stopcocks.

You will be glad you know where it is when you have a leak or burst pipe.