Removing gas fire, back boiler and radiators. Help and information on all topics relating to your central heating, air conditioning and ventilation issues.

[Zax]

Our 31 year old Potterton BBU has finally croaked. I'm slightly reluctant to spend £4k on a new boiler, especially as I'll probably need a new flue (doubt if the existing one's up to modern specs), all the radiators are old, grotty and have seized valves etc. plus we have 8 rads but hardly ever use more than 4 of them - e.g. never need or want to heat the bedrooms.

I'm contemplating switching to some form of electric heating on a smaller scale - i.e. enough for our needs and no more. If I do this, I'd get a CORGI fitter in to remove the BBU and cap off the water and gas pipes. My remaining questions are:

1. Will my existing cylinder, being of course a double walled type to heat the radiators, be happy enough running on the immersion heater with no water in the outer cavity? This is presumably what would happen if I have the BBU removed.

2. Having removed and scrapped the radiators, can I just cut off the remaining (now disused) pipe tails and then just clean and plug the exposed ends with some suitable compound? If so, what? Silicon mastic? Or would I need to cap the tails?

Thanks for anyone's expertise!

[htg engineer]

£4000 on a new boiler ? where you getting your prices from, BG ?

You wont be able to use the old flue for a gas boiler, whether in good condition or not.

What do you mean by electric heating ? wet heating system or space heaters ? As electric is expensive I would advise against this, the only time I advise using electric heating is if there's no gas to a property.

For a new gas combi heating system, with 8 radiators. It will cost <£3000, obviously cannot give an exact price as i don't know the boiler and radiator sizes, the amount of pipe etc etc....

Once the heating is drained, then you can do what you want with the radiator tails, although you may get slight weeps of water for a while if uncapped.


htg