New entire heating system - where to start?!

[partyplanningseason]

My heating system is falling apart, and the boiler is old. We put off getting a new heating system when we moved in over a decade ago, but it's definitely time now.

Has anyone got any tips on putting in a new heating system? Have you done it recently? Is there anything you wish you'd have done differently?

I think we'll probably end up going for an ordinary combi boiler but open to suggestions! Should we be thinking about solar? Other methods of heating? (I've ruled out heat pumps as the house is old and also it's too noisy as our neighbours are close by).

All the radiators will need replacing as they're rusty inside. Should I be thinking about fancy-pants new radiators? What even are fancy pants radiators these days?

I don't have a huge budget.

Also what do I look for in a plumber?

I feel totally clueless!! Any help much appreciated!

Have you looked into any grants?

Your normal type radiators will be fine for most rooms if you are on a budget. Perhaps a nice towel rail for your bathroom and a nicer feature one for your kitchen and dining room. If you have a local plumbers merchant, they will likely have some brochures you can have a look at. Plumber wise, ask for recommendations from friends, relatives and neighbours. Stick to a combi boiler, Worcester Bosch are good and you should get a decent guarantee.

I went down a heat pump rabbit hole as I saw there were grants available, but ended up deciding it's not suitable anyway as they're too noisy for us.

I'm not sure where to find other grants, do you know where I should be looking?

That sounds sensible, thanks :)

I used Boxt to get an idea of costs. They have an online calculator and are affiliated to Worcester Bosch. Boxt offer interest free credit. I found they were offering higher spec boilers with a Google digital thetmostat and were about 300 cheaper than the local firms. They also can fit quickly. Then I'd get a couple of comparative quotes from local firms.

I'll give them a go and see what quote they come up with, thanks :)

Our Worcester Bosch is brilliant - ten years on, and it’s working very well.

Please DON'T go for skirting board heating driven by combi boilers. Just no. More information available on request. 😂

Ask around (neighbours, friends, family, local Facebook groups... if you havw kids, we have even recommended/been recommended tradespeople via the class WhatsApp group!).

Agree with Worcester Bosch being solid. If you are using older radiators, it might be worth getting a power flush of the system (not sure if all companies offer this as standard when installing? Can only go bybthentwo we have installed- both comanies in different areas of the country insisted on it) to clean any gunk out.

The one thing to make sure is that they are Gas Safe registered, which means that they are a legal and competent person to install a gas boiler.

You may think about solar heating of water, not the photoelectric ones.

Also, have a look at insulation, especially in your loft. It should be at least 270 mm deep. There may be grants to top up if you don't have enough.

Wet underfloor heating is amazing. You get the wall space back.
Might also be worth thinking about a pressurised hot water tank if you like really good showers.

Please do tell me more. We need a replumb on our new house and it is something DH has mentioned. Is it a complete nightmare?

We recently replaced our combi boiler and 11 radiators, kept the pipework. Heat pumps not suitable so we went with gas again. Prices were between 7k and 10k for standard radiators but a decent boiler - We went with vaillant. I did think of fancy ones in the sitting room but decided too much effort to dust them! We've already noticed a big improvement in heat efficiency and the heating is on way less now.

Get a proper heating engineer to corretly size the heat loss of your rooms & property.
Modern condensing boilers are at their most efficient with a flow temp of 55 deg C whereas most plumbers size radiators based on 70 degC flow and set the boiler to run at 70degC which means it is not in its most effient mode and therefore costing more money to run.

55deg C is quite low and you will need larger radiators to account for the lower flow temp.

I know you said you didnt fancy a heat pump but do consider a hybrid system. Its purpose is to boost the boiler heating return temp which means your boiler doesnt have to work so hard and will therefore last longer. Also of all the renewable technologies it has the shortest payback period of 5-7 years and has a life expectancy of 25 years. This equates to changing your boiler twice over the period of the hybrid heat pump.

Having uprated the radiators, if the time of heat pumps only ever arrives, your radiators and pipework will be correct as heat pumps also run at lower flow temps.

Old house here too
We needed new pipes as well as they were the old really thin ones
We can’t have a heat pump because of the size, efficiency and construction of the property and aren’t allowed solar panels either.

We chose recycled bar radiators for the ground floor and new bar radiators for upstairs.
We interviewed a lot of plumbers and chose the one that understood the building and clearly knew how to best avoid loads of unsightly pipes.
We laid out on a plan where we wanted the rads in order to reduce pipework and did our own BTU calcs with the help of SPAB. If you aren’t doing the BTU calcs yourself make sure your plumber can do them or he has an engineer todo so. Most use standard charts if you house is of a standard construction.

The type of boiler will depend on your property. Combi boilers are good for up to 15 rads.

I'm confused as to why you think a heat pump would be too noisy. We can't hear ours at all from inside the house and if I'm standing right by it in the garden, it's very quiet and I would need to think about it to hear it..... We're really happy with ours.

another person saying heat pumps aren't noisy!
fully appreciate they won't work for all properties but we replaced our old, knackered boiler with one in December. The grants and loans we got meant we had to pay less than we would have for a new boiler, and the house is much warmer, and our bills are cheaper

This is a tiny thing but, when we did this (new boiler, radiators etc), we got a new heated towel rail and paid a little bit more for one with an electrical element. We then got an electrician to connect this to a switch in the spare room. Now we can turn the towel rail on and have warm towels without having to have the heating on, when it suits (eg in warm weather).

We’ve just had a new boiler, radiators were fine though, phew! We had a towel rail in the bathroom a few years ago.
we have a relatively modern house which was built in 1995 after better regs were introduced re insulation. It is really well insulated so has always been economical to heat. After replacing the old double glazing we’ve seen a 25% drop in energy use.

We had a 19 yr Worcester Bosch that had only been repaired once ( new pump). When it broke down a couple of weeks ago it was condemned, and had become less efficient.
We have replaced it with a new Worcester Bosch with the comfort thermostat ( their version of Hive) which is a neat control unit and connected to a phone app. Great for during the spring when you don’t need heating but get the odd frosty morning so I can switch on the heating while I’m still in bed.
You can also set up lots of heating schedules according to the weather. You can also see the outside temp.
It also has a feature that allows you to monitor use and cost of heating on a daily basis. We have it set at no more than 19 deg and it is a very comfortable temp. I grew up in the north where the solution to being cold was “ put more clothes on then”. My late DF’s mantra.

I would recommend the addition of the thermostats to individual radiators so that you can control the whole house. The app connects to the individual stats so you have complete control. We don’t have the radiators on in the bedrooms, residual heat from downstairs is more than adequate.
It allows you to heat the rooms you use.

The new boiler is very quiet, hot water rate is excellent and we’ve seen an improvement in shower temp and flow.

The boiler was fitted by accredited Worcester Bosch engineers so comes with a 12 yr guarantee that covers breakdown, so no call out, parts or labour charges, as long as you have it serviced annually. The engineers have quote £90 per service and they will contact me annually to remind me. £90 is average price around here. It’s a guarantee rather than warranty so Worcester Bosch are fairly confident in their product.

We had a Worcester Bosch oil fired boiler in a property in the Lake District. It was a little more expensive to maintain but was still going strong when we sold the house. It was over 25yrs old probably near to needing replacement but we factored that into the sale price. We had recently replaced the whole system apart from the boiler so left it to the new owners to choose what boiler they wanted.

Probably the first thing you need to do is get a survey done by the heating engineer. With changes in regs you may need to have new gas pipe, new paperwork throughout and if you want to change the layout of radiators they will be able to give you an idea of what is possible.
If you are lucky they will be able to use your existing paperwork with a little modification.
Probably worth getting a couple of quotes. Using an accredited heating engineer will be more expensive but boiler manufacturers will give guarantees as a result which could save money in the future.

I'm not worried about it from inside the house, I'm worried about annoying the neighbours.

If I had a big garden, no problem, but my garden is also tiny, we're really close to our neighbours.

The stuff I found online said heat pumps made about 50 decibels of noise and were equivilant to a quiet conversation.

I figured that if my neighbours can hear it all the time when they're in their garden it'll be annoying.

I also found this article that says: something else that said heat pumps aren't suitable for densly populated areas.

Heat pumps too loud for home, study says

UK Ministers have been told, that heat pumps are too loud to be installed in millions of homes under the UK Government’s noise guidelines. [...]

The study reveals that most heat pumps are too loud for many homes in built-up areas, such a terraced houses and flats, because they would break noise limits set for home-owners who want to install one without planning permission and with a government grant.

Local Authorities are also braced for a rise in noise complaints as more of the green appliances installed in urban areas.
[...]

Air source heat pumps, which are positioned outstand a home, can produce a low constant hum of between 40 and 60 decibels which is similar to the level of noise made by a fridge or dishwasher. They will typically run continuously throughout winter.

The UK Government is encouraging homeowners to install heat pumps by offering up to £7,500 towards the cost under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS).
[...]

But to qualify for the grant, heat pump installations must comply with regulations set out by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) – including a minimum level of noise disturbance to neighbours. It means a heat pump must not generate noise louder than 42 decibels within one metre of a neighbour’s door or window.

Yet, the report, which was presented to the Institute of Acoustics at a conference, found that the top heat pumps from the five main manufacturers, not one device would meet MCS standards on noise unless the unit was at least four metres away.

Interesting to hear about posters personal experience of them.

I'm also curious!

Well, a combi boiler is fine (I inherited a house with both) but (IMO) skirting board heating:

• gives you some rooms with no radiators (fair enough)
• what was installed was done by (IMO) a young heating engineer thrilled to try this new thing. Bad idea. Please get someone with experience and ask for examples of previous work.
• plastic skirting boards with flexible piping behind looks cheap, nasty, and all the joins between corners and surrounds going up and around doorways (see pics) can look dreadful.
• Once this was installed, anyone hoovering and banging up against it would dislodge corner joins and sealant.
• it's not as controllable as a radiator. A radiator thermostat going from 0 to 5 is something I understand, the skirting board bits are not as warm as I'd like.

Good luck. Please report back.

I asked the bloke who did the heating survey for our installation about heat pumps. He said that they are ok for the ultra insulated new builds but even then they struggle to heat to a comfortable temp when it’s cold. I think that you have to invest in additional sources of heat to cover the deficit such as electric underfloor heating or some sort of solid fuel heater ( log burner).
They are also very noisy.
He said that even our modern well insulated home would be difficult to heat.
I have just bought a heat condense tumble dryer, to reduce cost and improve carbon footprint print. It does take longer and clothes are not bone dry but on the plus side most don’t need ironing and cheap cotton items don’t shrink.

Since the government have move the heat pump issue to 2035 I decided it was better to have tried and tested technology that was more efficient than invest in a white elephant.