Is it worth paying for boiler cover?

modern gas boilers are today the best,probably the biggest scam this country has ever seen,no one can repair thebloody things,a curse on a society,they go wrong on an unprecedented scale,and if you try to repair these things on a large scale I will say that there wil be a lot of gas engineers with mental health problems,in their later lives,and its not good for customers either listening to exscuses why the thing don’t work.fact.

Graham – How do you soften the water? I’m interested because Beryl brought up the issue of water hardness.

In trawling through manufacturers’ instructions I have found some cautions, such as this one in a Worcester Bosch manual: “IMPORTANT: ARTIFICIALLY SOFTENED WATER MUST NOT BE USED TO FILL THE CENTRAL HEATING SYSTEM”

My own thoughts are that simple water softening where calcium and magnesium ions are exchanged for sodium ions would not be beneficial other than to avoid limescale deposits but use of purified water from which salts have been removed (as in water sold for use in irons) could be beneficial.

The nature of the heat exchanger (aluminium, stainless steel or old fashioned cast iron) could be a significant factor.

I agree that producing efficient but unreliable boilers is of questionable environmental benefit. Hopefully we can look forward to a compromise that combines decent reliability and efficiency, even if not the best in either category.

As far as I can see it is fine to use your normal tap water, with an inhibitor to minimise corrosion (giving the black sludge that accumulates in your radiators). The system is more or less closed and does not require regular additional water, so hard water should not be an issue. Is this the case?

With boilers containing aluminium heat exchangers, the pH is important. If the system water is alkaline, rapid corrosion will occur. A service engineer should check the pH routinely, using either a meter or simple test strips.

One of the big benefits of modern pressurised systems is that there should be little opportunity for oxygen to enter, except when the system is commissioned or drained for repairs or modification. I agree that tap water with inhibitor is OK but suspect that purified water (reverse osmosis is the primary treatment) will help prevent electrolytic corrosion that would occur when different metals and a conductive fluid such as tap water are present.

A heating system using a suitable grade of stainless steel for the boiler heat exchangers, radiators and plumbing and valves would avoid the fundamental flaw of using dissimilar metals, and might not be prohibitively expensive.

All my water is softened – apart from the kitchen sink tap and that for the garden. I have a fitted water softener.

My system is fine. It has softened water, inhibitor and no magnetic filter. It utilises an old boiler with an iron based heat exchanger. Realistically there isn’t much to go wrong, and that turns out to actually be the case. If people really took the bother to understand how things work then they wouldn’t allow themselves to be fleeced by boiler servicing companies who charge a lot for doing practically nothing. Where is the evidence that those who have their boilers serviced suffer fewer or less expensive breakdowns? None of the failures I’ve experienced would have been prevented by a service.

Flue and casing safety is a different matter. CO can be fatal and often is.

In reply to those who question boiler servicing as useful or not.

As a gas engineer (plumber) I see many systems that have never been checked throughout their working lives and are 100% fine. Mostly standard efficiency models.

When it comes to newer A rated boilers, they produce a higher amount of acidic water from the spent flue gas. If this water happens to leak into the metal parts of the boiler then it will quickly eat its way through. If the main boiler casing becomes badly corroded then it’s pretty much new boiler time.
The A rated boilers are set up precisely to allow the correct ratio of air/gas mixture to burn properly and if this goes out of sync it loses efficiency and also becomes a health risk.

I would say that servicing is probably the wrong word to use for it as generally no parts are removed and cleaned etc like the older types used to need. We charge a standard call out for a “service” as its normally straight forward but still essential once a year I feel.

As for boiler reliability and parts. Absolutely shocking. Some manufacturers should be made to answer for producing such crap yet punishing the unlucky user by charging outrageous amounts for the spare parts to replace the garbage that they put in a boiler.

It’s embarrassing to have to tell somebody how much a part costs sometimes and I do feel bad when it joins a list of other repairs. Due to the amount of bad engineers out there there is a huge amount of distrust by the public towards engineers. The maintenance plans take this problem away as engineers can throw parts at the boiler till its fixed and it won’t cost the customer any more than the monthly fee.

Manufacturers don’t help engineers who are trying to fix their machines either as they want to use their own guys. Problem with boiler company repairs is that the price to even get them in the door is around £250 or higher. That could be for a 2 minute job.

Boiler companies should be made to answer. Training provided by them to assist engineers is only for sales.

Good for you! I agree entirely about what to insure and the reasons for doing so. I only pay to insure my house and my boat. Not contents, not my belongings, my health or even my life. Paying for insurance cover the years would have had a substantial financial impact on my life and my lifestyle choices so I am glad I decided to to this.
I do have “free” travel insurance with HSBC. This has proved ineffective to the nth degree, even when I missed my plane because the train I was on broke down I was not covered. Shame on them!

Alec – You have told us that you would not use inhibitors despite the fact that Viessman list ones that are compatible with their boilers, and now you tell us that you would prefer to ignore the building regs. I do hope you tell prospective customers about this before you start an installation. 🙂

You have mentioned that use of inhibitors is a UK peculiarity, so I am left wondering why the Fernox website can be viewed in a variety of languages.

Like Graham and Beryl, I’m going to stick with my old boiler.

Alec – This is what I suggested earlier. If you use purified water, exclude air (which should be easy to achieve in modern systems) and top up with purified water, there should be little corrosion. The purified water should be decent quality and it is important to use a conductivity meter to check the system water is free from impurities.

I suspect that when you include the cost of the engineer’s time, this approach will cost more than adding corrosion inhibitor.

A crucial reason for having your boiler checked – call it servicing – is to ensure that it is burning gas correctly and that the combustion products are correct. It is a safety matter that should not be neglected.

Sadly……..all this over a magnaclean unit that takes less than 2 minutes to service/clean !

Thank you Vicky for the time taken to give a detailed case. And thanks John for providing a context for the difficulty involved in the extra work!

My only downside is that because of the way Conversations is constructed it is near impossible to do a search enquiry and find the gems that exist in these threads.

There is plenty online about leaking Magaclean units, though I have no idea whether that’s due to a fault with the product or poor servicing.

In the circumstances I can understand why the servicing company should wish to exclude the Magnaclean from their annual maintenance plan, but they should make this clear before taking payment for the plan.

It would be thoroughly pointless to have a service plan in place that does not cover a servicable part.

It amazes me what the public put up with…it really does!

Dieseltaylor – I am disappointed that this site does not have an efficient search facility but I can often track down Conversations by remembering some of the words used. A Google search for
magnaclean “Which? Conversation”
will find this one.

I have also got some pages bookmarked because of interesting contributions, including a couple of yours.

Mike you have described a central heating nightmare and illustrated that British Gas maintenance is not worthwhile. Just to state the obvious: the leaking pipes must be completely drained of water to enable successful re -soldering. and this is likely to be quite difficult with pipes located below floor as the drain c**k(s) will be at a higher level. I suspect that BG did not drain the pipes. It may be that the only way to drain them is to freeze them at an appropriate spot, then cut them and quickly attach two hoses to drain the residue outside.( It may be necessary to create a syphon if the hoses have to go over the door threshold). Threaten to cancel your contract with BG unless they solve the problem. When the contract ends don’t renew it anyway. Try Which Local to find a recommended local firm to look after your system.

Or you might take the opposite view – that this is an expensive problem to sort out that would cost a fortune were it not for the service contract. The fact that British Gas hasn’t yet solved it is not necessarily a huge criticism of them because the problem you describe is traceable to defects in the original installation. Ideally you would never hide pipe joints under a screed and you would only use pipe materials that were designed for being buried in a screed. As Dave says, working at the low point in a system is always problematic because of the difficulty of draining residual water.

Mike you have not said what sort of pipe is involved. Copper pipe and fittings should never be buried directly in a cementitous screed because cement attacks copper over time. Copper pipe can be covered with Denso tape if it’s in contact with cement-based materials.

Back to the question of the BG contract. No-one else would take it on as a new service contract as it’s a known defect. To deal with the problem properly would require some or all of the pipe to be exposed and replaced. Or, if one can work out the pipe runs, one can replace all the pipe in new positions. This is fiddly and messy – one could easily spend 2 or 3 days doing it, possibly more to make good the screed. I wouldn’t be surprised if it cost around £1000 for a plumber to deal with. I think BG would love you to cancel the contract because they’ve already lost on it. However, I think you’d be better off getting them to do the job properly.

dieseltaylor, I too am concerned about CA ventures. I wonder why they needed to launch in India, ending up with a closed venture and a substantial loss? I would have thought the core business of looking after UK consumers through more thorough testing of products should be the priority. I would also question the need to launch a Mortgage Advisory Service, again with considerable costs, rather than, say, a “trusted” accreditated mortgage advisers scheme?
Is this off topic? I don’t think so – it may prejudice the effort and money being employed on properly testing products and services?
I am happy to be reassured though, and admonished. Perhaps I have a too-simplistic view of what Which? should be about.

Alex – Thanks to the recent Which? report on boilers I learned that there are some respectable manufacturers’ warranties provided these days. That is important when repairs can be expensive and – as reported by Which? – boiler servicing can leave something to be desired.

Like Dieseltaylor and Malcolm I’m keen on more rigorous testing but my request is more modest. I would like Which? to tell us about the length of the standard manufacturer’s warranty for all products tested. I appreciate that manufacturers often do promotions offering longer warranties, which can be a bonus.

Thank you for the response Alex. I was at the AGM and recognise the mantra but big figures need examining as quality of testing is relevant.

Perhaps if I mentioned yet again the Logiks steamer as a Best Buy despite reader comments, the atrocious test of the Dualit as mentioned on page 11 of the current magazine but removed from the website. Unless Which? introduces details like replaceable batteries, toaster elements, and most importantly durability for both small and large appliances I think it will lose credibility and simply become like Good Housekeeping or Expert Reviews.

As to boilers I mentioned that the Dutch consumer body’s recommended boiler has been marketed for at least a couple of years in the UK. I am not sure that the survey of installed boilers over the last seven years is that helpful in establishing what is newish to the market is superior or not. As we cannot buy backwards in time it behoves some comment on what the current marketplace offers – and that also includes heat pumps etc.

The increasing figures you quote for products and services as tested could you perhaps breakdown to how many are electronic goods like TV’s ,smart phones , tablets etc, and cameras. I see Samsung says it will reduce its range of smartphones by between a third and a quarter in 2015.

I am not sure how much it costs to buy in research from laboratories but it strikes me that perhaps Which? needs an advisory body such as Stiftung Warentest has to make sure that the tests requested make sense. I am still astonished that whereas their washing machine testing actually includes tests for build quality the Which? testing was/is done on optical cleanliness at 40C.

For around three years Which? has had requests for testing the three types of tyre summer, winter, and all-season in a like to like testing regime in UK winter temperatures. What we had a few months ago was something on winter tyres at a cold temperature and a review of all-seasons with testing carried out at 30C which is not a temperature often met in the UK.

The logic behind using these two test together for an article on cold tyres seems less than stellar. There does seem a very good case that technical smarts is required and looking at the executives and the Trustees there seems to be a dearth of scientific or practical engineering background.

Either the technical advisory body needs to be implemented or more use made of subscribers with the knowledge in the subject areas to construct sensible tests.

wavechange, I agree about guarantees. However, I am even more concerned to know that a product is reliable – how long it is likely to function without a breakdown. Reliability is given stars but actual statistics seem hard to come by.

Let’s hope we get a Conversation devoted to guarantees, Malcolm. It’s very important we discuss the issue of reliability. The big problem with trying to assess reliability is how a product is used. Think of the way some people abuse products, often unwittingly, or just use them more than others do. Repairability would be easier to assess but that is not much use if spares are not available.

Hopefully we can discuss these issues more in the coming year. I would like to explore what constitutes abuse and fair wear & tear, and striking a balance between the rights of consumers and retailers.

The question Which? has asked is whether it is worth paying for a service contract and maybe some of us, myself included, are not good at focusing on what could be a useful discussion. 🙁

The fact is that most heating installations in the UK use simple control. If our discussion was about heating systems it would be pertinent to discuss more efficient systems – and possibly more to go wrong, including lack of knowledge and understanding by service engineers and users.

Once installation of boilers using more complicated controls becomes common, it will be worth comparing service options, reliability and cost of ownership.

Last year I installed a very simple central heating programmer that a friend’s elderly parents had purchased. They had struggled with a more sophisticated one ever since they had moved into their bungalow and were struggling to see the small text. All they wanted was something that could easily be set to come on and go off at specified times with a manual override. Within a few days they reported back that they were delighted. I could give several similar anecdotes.

The fact is that many people struggle with complex systems even if you and I can cope. Address that and more people will be interested in using more controllable heating systems. ALL controls on all need to be highly intuitive to use. Designers need to adapt to the needs of users.

I rather suspect that if you opt for a more sophisticated system it cost significantly more and there might be the opportunity to charge more for servicing.

The ‘few bits of electronics’ can cost a fortune to replace. For example, I recently wanted a simple circuit board for a popular stairlift and it would have cost £400 + VAT. You will know how much circuit boards for boilers cost.

People often get charged for parts that are not faulty. For example, last Christmas I watched a boiler service engineer replace a Worcester-Bosch circuit board and another part on behalf of a friend. Fortunately the engineer was still there when the intermittent fault recurred. I have sympathy for any engineer who has to deal with an intermittent fault, but had I not asked for the original parts to be replaced, that could have been an expensive repair. My sympathy disappeared when I realised that he had claimed 45 minutes travelling time and his previous call was less than ten minutes away. My fault for signing the job sheet without reading it.

Unless boilers are different from other domestic products, adding additional electronics will substantially increase the product cost, even if the additional components are not expensive.

I disagree. You are ignoring too many factors. No-one else is going to be interested in our discussion, so I wish you Merry Christmas.