Boilers - a rant...

I usually muse about matters spiritual and theological. But today I am thinking about boilers. Specifically condensing gas boilers.

There is a reason for this. The central heating did not come on this morning and the weather forecast is that the temperature will be falling and more winter weather is on the way.

The boiler repair man, who I have got to know quite well over the last couple of years arrived promptly. But he admitted to me that boilers today are far less reliable than the ones that he used to install twenty years ago. They might be more economic and produce much more heat for much less gas but they keep going wrong.

And the regulations do not allow them to be repaired in the traditional sense. Repairing a faulty boiler is now a case of identifying a fault and replacing the malfunctioning bits with spare parts. The inside of a boiler is full of electronic components that the repair man cannot repair but can only unplug and replace. Even if a wire connection comes off they are not allowed to solder it on because under the gas regulations that is considered an adaptation of the safety approved design.

Someone told me last week he had a boiler in his home that had been installed twenty years ago. It had never gone wrong and only needed cleaning and servicing once a year.  I told him to hang on to it as it was a far better piece of equipment than the modern ones.

The environmentalists have been guilty of encouraging people to replace old boilers with more efficient ones but is this really an eco gain if the new ones incur such heavy maintenance costs and have a far shorter useful life.

Is this progress?  Am I a grumpy old man!? (rhetorical question)

Rant over. I must go and fetch some more logs in for the wood stove!