Oil boiler upgrade - small house

Hi,

I have a very small dormer style house (2 downstairs rooms & 1 bedroom and bathroom upstairs). It's currently heated by an oil boiler about 16 years old so not very efficient and probably about to fall apart. I've been looking at getting it upgraded to a condensing bolier and have had conflicting advise from the contractors who have looked at it.

One is recommending going with the controls required for the SEAI grant whereas the other is saying that the house is too small for the controls to have much impact. They've both quoted similar prices - €2400 for the boiler and an additional €1000 for the controls.

When I ask about the size of the boiler they are both quite non-committal just saying that it will be the 'right' size. I'm not sure what the 'right size' is - the house only has 5 radiators. Could anybody hazard a guess?

Also, neither of them have mentioned getting new rads whereas I have read on other posts that a condensing boiler will not work to it's full efficiency unless the rads are also upgraded?

One of the contractors is a bit pushy and I feel I'm being taken for a bit of a fool. I am quite ignorant of heating systems so it wouldn't take much to fool me .

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

MaraG said:

When I ask about the size of the boiler they are both quite non-committal just saying that it will be the 'right' size. I'm not sure what the 'right size' is - the house only has 5 radiators. Could anybody hazard a guess?

Click to expand...

I'd be very wary of both if they can't tell you what size boiler they propose to use. Chances are they're thinking of using one which is likely to be overkill in your case.

I would go for a Grant Vortex 15 - 26. This can be range rated to 5 different outputs to suit the installation. It can easily be worked out with a Mear's calculator. 15kw will still probably be too big but that is the smallest you can go without losing efficiency from boiler heat exchanger surface area.
Zoning will ALWAYS be more efficient. I would definitely go with zoning and take avail of the SEAI grant as it will be worth €610 including BER survey grant. It will also give you an independent assessor of the contractors work to ensure work is carried out to standard.