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Conventional boilers

Conventional boilers burn fuel in a combustion chamber surrounded by a water jacket. This heats the water, which is then circulated around the heating system. Unfortunately, not all the heat produced by the burning fuel is used to heat the water. Much of it is lost to the surrounding air, and more disappears up the flue. To overcome these inefficiencies, condensing boilers are designed to extract more heat from a given quantity of fuel than is possible from a conventional boiler.

Condensing boilers

Condensing boilers are high efficiency boilers that waste almost no heat out of the flue. They are environmentally friendly, but only work in the condensing mode when the working conditions are correct - less than 50% of the radiators must be fitted with thermostatic radiator valves, for example. They also have a shorter than average lifespan and can be very expensive to buy.

Combination boilers

Combination boilers provide both instant hot water and central heating, but not at the same time - they are "hot water priority", which means that when hot water is being run there is no heat output to the radiators. This also means they have low water rate, so they can only feed one tap at a time.

If there isn’t a great demand for hot water in your home then combination boilers are ideal, particularly as they do not take up a lot of space. They are also very easy to install and cheap to run. However, they can be expensive to repair and many are designed to be replaced after five years, so you may find that replacing your combination boiler is cheaper than repairing it!