Should I get a combi boiler?

[wholeeverything]

Living in Ireland (in case that matters) in a 1990s built house with gas central heating.

We have had our entire heating system replumbed so it is now a closed gas heating system. Only things not replaced are the hot water cylinder and the boiler (about ten years old, modern boiler but not a combi boiler).

We still have a minor leak which we have been advised is 99% in the old cylinder somewhere, given the evidence.

We have the option of replacing the cylinder or scrapping the cylinder entirely and upgrading to a combi boiler. Difference of about 2 grand in the prices.

Is it worth waiting until we can afford the combi boiler? Is it really that much better than a 10 year old non-combi boiler? I'd really rather just get the job done but don't want to throw money down the drain either.

Not sure if it helps, but I've just bought a 1980s property.
Original microbore piping (every plumber pulled a face!) and open vented water cylinder, storage tanks etc.
Gravity fed shower was appalling pressure.

Just switched to a combi boiler 2 weeks ago (was very anxious as 50% of people I asked said leaks were a huge risk).

Long story short, water pressure is amazing (can't actually use the shower on full now) and gas cost has halved. (Not huge in terms of actual money as we were low use anyway, but still gone from 80p a day to 40p).

We are only on 1bar or psi (can't remember unit) not the max most systems would be set to. This was just to reduce the leak risk on old connections.

Edit to add the boiler we replaced had been installed in 2017.

Yeah, bit of a dilemma this one.

As somebody who had a combi boiler and one of our pipes spring a leak under mains pressure, I'm more cautious and probably prefer the standard boiler and get a pump for the shower, which I understand can be done.

I’ve had combi boilers for use. Excellent water pressure (people comment on it!), and wouldn’t have anything else. I had a combi in my last home, moved to this one with a tank. Bloody nightmare, constantly running out of hour water halfway through running baths, washing up etc. So annoying, so when the tank sprung a leak switched back to a combi. Significant improvement!

I have never had a pipe leak in either house over a 20 plus year period.

Thanks for that. I suppose a factor is that we are three people with an electric shower and no baths so water pressure isn't a concern. It's just for dishes, shaving and hands/face.

In your situation I think a combi would be better. It will just heat on demand so will be cheaper to run if you donr use much hot water. You can buy ones with small internal tanks so there is some hot water ready when you need it but that probably isn't worth it for you. Plus you will get the space back from the hot water and header tanks. If you have a metal loft tanks it's probably worth £40-60 on ebay

System are good when you need lots of showers running simultaneously.

They can struggle a bit if you say have someone having a shower, and someone else doing the washing up at the same time, or two people having showers. It's not great when one person is having a shower and another turns on the hot water at the sink, which screws up the temperature of the shower.

They probably dont last as long as system boilers, because they fire up everytime the hot water is turned on. This means moving parts like valves opening and closing more often. I don't know how the heat exhangers work, but if the water flows though a heat exchanger uninhibited which it probably does then it will probably wreck it more quickly. This is why you have lots of inhibitor in a closed system loop. So my guess is the time to failure of combi boilers is faster than system boilers.

I personally don't consider a combi as an 'upgrade' to a traditional and well tried and tested boiler with cylinder, assuming space isn't an issue.

How many bedrooms and bathrooms in your house OP?

Have you considered an air to water heat pump instead? We have recently had one installed to replace our gas boiler/hot water tank and it's amazing, the house is warmer and the bills are cheaper. I would never go back to gas.

Thank you for this..I'd like to do it but I think we would need to further upgrade our insulation and windows/doors quite a bit first.