Hello boiler, bye-bye shower

We had our new combi boiler fitted a few months ago. The old one was struggling - it could only produce about an inch of hot water before making some horrific noises, giving up and going cold again. Furthermore, when we started a boiler care contract with British Gas, we were basically told it was a waste of time as it would be impossible to source any of the parts for it if it broke. 

A new boiler was ordered and installed. We were quite lucky as the pipework was the right size already so there was very little work to do to install the new boiler - it took less than a day!

Left: Old; Right: New

The new one is nice and efficient and came with some gadgetry:

The new wireless receiver for the combined thermostat and timer has been installed in one of the kitchen cupboards to replace the old timer. Its left a bit of an unsightly gap but it will do!

Our new all-singing-all-dancing thermostat and timer. You can text it, control it online or use an iPhone app to switch it on/change the temperature/change the timings etc - very geeky!

So, now we can have baths again:

Left: The boiler would only produce about an inch of water before; Right: Now we can have real baths again!

It was a good thing we replaced the boiler when we did as about a month ago our electric shower gave up the ghost and stopped producing hot water. You would think during a heat wave a cold shower wouldn't be so bad, but it really was too cold!

The old broken shower.

We called out a plumber for a quote on fixing it and he managed to narrow it down to two parts: one which would cost £15 to replace and one which would cost closer to £60. As a new electric shower would cost around £70-£100 anyway, we decided to order the cheaper part and see if that would fix it, but it didn't work.

We were both a bit relieved at that! It was a pathetic shower anyway and when we chose our new boiler we picked one that would allow us to install a thermostatic mixer shower in the future. So, we've decided to bring our showery-plans forward and have bought a new Mira shower. We managed to get £60 off by buying it at the Hedge End B&Q store, rather than our local Southampton one.

Mira Pronta EV shower

We're hoping to install this soon, but at the moment we're making do with baths and showering at work.