08/01/2023
Imagine you want to renew your 12-year-old car or phone... Or your 12-year-old laptop, games console, TV, Sky box, printer, food processor, camera, in fact anything 12 years old- what would you expect? Can you remember what a 12-year-old phone did (or didn’t do)? The difference on all of these things 12 years on would be humongous! You would have mind blowing improvements of every aspect of all of them. So... let’s add a 12 year old Ideal Logic 35 Combi to the list (that would be one of the originals). If you were one of the very few Logic owners whose boiler had lasted 12 years – what would you expect to get? Assumingly something fantastically improved on the one being replaced. -with vehicle emissions and fuel economy being squeezed all the time to improve efficiency & reduce our carbon footprint - in fact just about every manufacturer everywhere trying to make energy savings & be more green. You would be justified in thinking that over 12 years, something amazing would have evolved with the Logic, the biggest selling boiler in the UK. Seems like a fair assumption.
So I looked at the data or specification sheet on the original Logic and the latest Logic 2 (below) and as you can see, apart from reducing Nox from Cat 5 to Cat 6 and a small reduction in electrical consumption (they were forced to fit ERP pumps a few years ago) nothing has changed. It’s the same old boiler in another new box. I guess a new boiler just means they have found a way of churning out the same old beast in a new box cheaper than they did before.
The Minimum output of this boiler (35kW) is 7.1 kW. Hardly any new builds and the vast majority of normal small, insulated houses have a maximum demand well less than 7kW at -3 outside. A new build three bed will be less than 4kW so this ’NEW’ Logic2 boiler will never ever, ever do anything but cycle its whole life. You still can’t range rate it, you still can’t match the pump pressure to the index circuit. I think this is not acceptable and we should expect better in today's green & environmentally friendly climate! The new WB, Intergas, Valliant, Viessmann, Alpha Vokera, Ravenheat, are all range rateable and have minimum outputs of around half or better than the Logic so will have better periods of long run times enhancing efficiency.
The new Logic doesn’t appear to comply with the new Part L. It’s not range rateable (required for part L) and its minimum output is far to high to comply on the vast majority of houses. The new regulations say the boiler must modulate down to a ’typical load’ of the dwelling. Well if the dwelling needs say 6 Kw @-2 , we could surmise that the ‘typical’ load would be around half of that at 3kW (HHIC refuse to explain how to work this out). Ideal refuse to put in writing that this new boiler complies to Part L despite many attempts to get this. Letters don’t get answered & posts just ignored. We may all be fitting boilers not compliant & not fit for purpose. If anyone loses in court over miss fitting anon compliant boiler, the after wave will make PPI look like a flash in the pan.
With around 1000 new builds a day being signed off I guess around half will have the Ideal Logic in, so that’s around 500 houses a day being signed off with a boiler that will cycle all its life. You may say I am being unfair – that the 24kW version is better? Well, it is but still has an almost 5kW minimum output.
The HHIC write the new regulations to help us save the planet & look after our grandchildren. So why have they made the regs impossible to interpret and refuse to give any advice on how to apply them? It might have something to do with Ideal, Baxi & the other boiler manufacturers paying the HHIC wages. I doubt anything that doesn’t work for the bottom lines for the manufacturers gets suppressed. Just look at Boiler plus - a great leap forward to start with, that was watered down & down until it was just about worthless. In 2023 you can still fit an on off room stat with Hive. What a joke, yet all of these companies claim to be saving the planet! It’s just about profit.
I am again writing to HHIC and to every boiler manufacturer whose e mail I can find to ask them if their boilers comply to Part L in an ordinary small house and if so how they calculated it to be compliant.
This entire thing is just a money-making scam, in my opinion. No governing body has ever had the power to force British boiler manufacturers to improve the efficiency of their boilers as they set their own standards via HHIC. The Manufacturers are answerable to no one – hence 12 years on it’s the same old boiler in a new case.
Hopefully I have got this all wrong & both Ideal & the HHIC will get their act together and explain what we need to know to select a compliant boiler. If they answered my emails I wouldn’t be posting this.
As installers we need to demand better for our customers and our grandchildren.
