In message , at 12:50:25 on
Fri, 27 Nov 2015, e27002 aurora remarked:

My limited experience with combi boilers is that they are far from
reliable.

I have experience with precisely one, and it has been as reliable as
one might expect a system boiler to be.

How many have you experienced, and how old? The technology doesn't
differ that much from a system boiler. It's just that if it fails
there is no hot water backup.

I've had a few, and the main problem is they don't deliver hot water
fast enough to fill a bath in a sensible length of time. Let alone
filling up a bath at the same time someone else is having a shower.

Nothing to do with low pressure British plumbing then?

The reverse, actually. Try filling the bath faster and the water goes
lukewarm. It's not a problem getting the water through, it's the
capacity to heat it up "on demand" in the first place.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 12:48:37 on
Fri, 27 Nov 2015, e27002 aurora remarked:
My limited experience with combi boilers is that they are far from
reliable.

I have experience with precisely one, and it has been as reliable as
one might expect a system boiler to be.

How many have you experienced, and how old? The technology doesn't
differ that much from a system boiler. It's just that if it fails
there is no hot water backup.

One, well I did say limited, :-). And, its age was, to me unknown.
Before I bought this condo, I rented an apartment here in town for two
years. It had a combi boiler, it heated the water for the radiators
and instantaneously heated the water for the shower and faucets. Twice
during my stay I called out the repairman because the hot water supply
failed.

The worst one we had was in a rented house, and the hot water was out of
action for three weeks (in February). British Gas, who had a maintenance
contract, called almost every day, and were simply unable to work out
what to do with it. Eventually they called out someone from the
manufacturer.

For three weeks we had to boil water in pots on the cooker to wash or
have a bath. The managing agents were useless; as far as they were
concerned it was BG's problem.
--
Roland Perry

"e27002 aurora" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Nov 2015 11:27:23 +0000, Neil Williams
wrote:

On 2015-11-27 09:33:32 +0000, e27002 aurora said:

My limited experience with combi boilers is that they are far from
reliable.

I have experience with precisely one, and it has been as reliable as
one might expect a system boiler to be.

How many have you experienced, and how old? The technology doesn't
differ that much from a system boiler. It's just that if it fails
there is no hot water backup.


One, well I did say limited, :-). And, its age was, to me unknown.
Before I bought this condo, I rented an apartment here in town for two
years. It had a combi boiler, it heated the water for the radiators
and instantaneously heated the water for the shower and faucets. Twice
during my stay I called out the repairman because the hot water supply
failed.

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

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.


I didn't know you could get combo with pilot light!

Both ours - even the one fitted approx 1990 long before we bought the house,
were spark.

James

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.

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 16:56:00 -0800, Nobody wrote:

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:31:02 +0000, Recliner
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Nov 2015 22:23:03 +0000, Adrian
wrote:

In message , Roland Perry
writes
Or its supply of hot water. I've only stayed at two hotels (out of
several hundreds) which ran out of hot water.

The first was in Maidenhead in around 1980 and had suffered a one-off
major outage of some kind. The other was Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2009 where
no-one appeared to be that surprised that the system had broken down
yet again.

I stayed in one in Weymouth (the name of which I've forgotten) four
years ago where the hot and cold water stopped. Fortunately the
bath/sink appeared to be on a different supply to the cistern. It was
back after a couple of days.

I stayed in a very smart hotel recently where both the hot and cold
water failed for a while. However, as it was in Livingstone, Zambia, I
suppose that's not unusual. It also had slightly unusual lawn mowers:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/reclin...7660656194221/

We were warned that though they look cute, they are also very
bad-tempered, and it was inadvisable to get too close if we didn't
want to get kicked. There were also giraffes in the hotel grounds,
though I failed to get a picture of them.

At least Canada geese are laid back. But the self-fertilising of
lawns can be problematic.

One adds: Canada Geese are not so laid back when they have their
young. If you ever see two adult geese and several yellow fluffy
chicks, give them plenty of space.
If one of the adults starts to move quickly towards you, with its neck
parallel to the ground, take several steps back.

On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 18:27:57 +0100, Robin9
wrote:


Sam Wilson;151977 Wrote:
In article ,
Guy Gorton wrote:
-
On Sun, 22 Nov 2015 18:03:11 +0000, e27002 aurora
wrote:
-
On Sun, 22 Nov 2015 17:24:25 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:
-
In message , at
08:44:47 on Sun, 22 Nov 2015, Railsigns.uk
remarked:
There can't be many people who feel inclined to comment on the
excellence or otherwise of a hotel room's plumbing

Or its supply of hot water. I've only stayed at two hotels (out of
several hundreds) which ran out of hot water.

The first was in Maidenhead in around 1980 and had suffered a one-off
major outage of some kind. The other was Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2009 where

no-one appeared to be that surprised that the system had broken down
yet
again.-

Given how well travelled you are, Roland, one is surprised you have
not noticed the quality of the mains pressure water systems found in
those United States. One of the things that attracted me to my unit
here on the south coast was the absence of the usual low pressure UK
plumbing. My shower here works as well as my shower in Tucson. That
is hardly the norm for the UK.-

It is attractive until the day the mains water system ceases to flow
into the premises for whatever reason - planned/unplanned.
My late sister-in-law's house was mains-only and it was not a happy
solution - add being coupled to a combi boiler and the water system
was useless.-

A family member who works in the renewables sector laments the vogue for

combi boilers. A hot water tank provides a useful way of decoupling
supply and demand when energy sources are intermittent.

Sam


I can well believe that water industry professionals dislike the
widespread abandonment of hot water tanks, but in a country
where new homes (and rooms within homes) become ever smaller,
hot water tanks take up too much space.

So if your new home cannot have a hot tank, how do you store free hot
water from your solar panels?
Yes, we have solar panels which are wonderful although
weather-dependent. Despite that limitation, it does not take full sun
to create hot water so most of our spring, summer and autumn hot water
comes from them. Another bonus, albeit an expensive one, is the new
hot tank we needed which is astonishingly well insulated.

Guy Gorton

In article
-sept
ember.org,
Recliner wrote:

Sam Wilson wrote:
In article
-sep
tember.org,
Recliner wrote:

e27002 aurora wrote:

Cleanliness is next to G_dliness. I like a real, hi-volume,
hi-pressure, hot water shower. :-)

Is godliness now a swear word? I'd missed that.

Adrian is a Messianic Jew or something close to it. Observant Jews
don't like to use the name of the Deity in either speech or writing.
Leaving out the "o" seems to be sufficient to meet that requirement.

Yes, I was aware of his unusual religious leanings. But if one is of that
persuasion, surely one should simply avoid using any prohibited words,
rather than using them with a letter omitted (which actually draws
attention to the word he's not supposed to use).

You'll have to ask Adrian, but I suspect godliness is a concept he might
very well want to talk about. I'm not sure what other locution he might
use.

Sam

--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.