On Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:03:27 +0000, Neil Williams
wrote:

On 2015-11-27 12:48:37 +0000, e27002 aurora said:

Moreover, when the pilot light went out, relighting and restarting the
system was an art form, a torturous one.

Quite an old one, then. Modern boilers don't have pilot lights; they
ignite reliably on demand using an electronic ignition.

Added two that, two homes that I have owned, one in the US and one in
the UK had instantaneous water heaters. Both worked well for the
first year. After that, we experienced problems.

A tank with heaters works best. My UK home has a modern tank with two
immersion heaters. My US home has a tank with a gas heater.

Electric immersion heaters are an expensive way to operate. Heating
and providing hot water for my small 3 bedroom house using gas is
noticeably cheaper than doing so for my old one bedroom flat (smaller
than the downstairs of my current house) was using electricity.

Understood. Unfortunately this building is all electric. Since it is
four floors high that is probably as it should be.

As an aside, despite being a cabled town, Virgin did not run a cable
to building. It is four years old, so well after the area was cabled.
So, I could not move my cable, and internet access, with me. We do
however have a communal dish on the roof.

I assume you mean an unvented cylinder to provide your US-style high
pressure system? I think if I was going for a tank system from scratch
I would choose one of those.

Yes, it is an unvented cylinder. It is very heavily insulated with
two immersion heaters.