Worcester Combi Boiler

As I said in my previous opinion about our new washing machine, when we moved into this house in July, things were definitely not as they had appeared to be!

We had a conventional hot water tank with an immersion heater that worked so we could get hot water, but when we tried the central heating, there was nothing doing. We couldn’t get it to work on the timer or by manually switching it on and off.

And so it came to pass that the plumber was called.

We’d found ourselves a good plumber who had been as part of the group of people building and kitting out the en suite bathroom in mom and dad’s room.

He said that we should have a new boiler; either a wall mounted one, or a floor standing one, which would be the more powerful of the two. We chose the wall-mounted version as this would save space in the kitchen, it was the cheaper option and it would be perfectly powerful enough for our needs.

The boiler that we chose is a Worcester Combi Boiler 35CDi II.

It comes in a standard white metal case measuring 450mm wide, 850mm high and 600mm deep, so it’s quite a large piece of kit. Ours is fitted in the corner of the kitchen where an old heating boiler of some description had been. Don’t ask me what the old one actually did, if anything, we never worked that one out – as I say it’s a house like that!!

The cost of the boiler plus the labour for the fitting was £1,650. It took the plumber and his mate about two hours to fit the new boiler and to check all the system and make sure all the radiators worked properly.

The hot water is now available constantly, and the boiler is powerful enough for us to able to fill two baths at the same time if we wanted to, although Dave and I usually take showers these days.

When the hot water tap is turned on the boiler fires immediately and within a moment or two hot water flows out of the tap, any time day or night. There is a thermostat on the boiler itself so that the temperature of the water can be controlled. Obviously there would be no need to have the water coming out of the tap at near boiling point, because we’d just have to cool it by adding cold water to it, so we have set it at an optimum level for washing up, bathing etc.

There is a central heating timer on the front of the boiler, which is one with the little tappets all the way round corresponding to the 24 hours in the day at 15-minute intervals. By pushing the tappets in towards the centre of the dial you can control what time of the day the central heating comes on and goes off. There is also a switch to turn the central heating on and off manually.

We also have thermostats on all the radiators so that, when the heating is on, we can make sure that the rooms we are using are the ones that are the warmest. the radiators heat up very quickly once the heating has been switched on too!

The boiler itself also has set of indicator lights on it. One is the mains electricity indicator and should always be on, showing that the boiler is connected to the electricity supply to power the pump and the timers.

There are two further lights corresponding to the central heating and the hot water, which light up when the boiler is in use.

Before the plumber left he handed us a plastic T shaped implement and said he would tell us what to do with it. Well, I did wonder what was coming……

It was actually a key to be used to re pressurise the system. There’s a dial on the front of the boiler showing the water pressure and every time it dips below a certain level we will have to insert the key and turn it in order to increase the water pressure to the requisite level so that the boiler will work efficiently. This will happen every three months or so apparently.

The added bonus is that we now have quite a good-sized storage cupboard where the hot water tank used to be, as that was removed since it was no longer needed.

In conclusion I would say that, although this has been a big expenditure that we could have well done without I am sure that the efficiency of the new system will mean that it will begin to pay for itself straight away.

By the way the title of the opinion is a line from a song, but I don't know what it's called or who sings it!