The blasted boiler is on the blink again.
It's 13 years old and on its last legs. Sometimes it gives us hot water, sometimes not. At the moment I get hot water for around 30 seconds before it clicks off and doesn't come on again.
For six weeks during our car challenge with went without hot water or heating. Luckily our shower, washing machine and dishwasher had their own thermostats and I'm not adverse to washing stuff in cold water when necessary, so we managed without it until one day it suddenly started working again. We didn't have the central heating on in that time, and the only couple of really cold nights we had we lit the fire.
It first started playing up a couple of years ago so we've been trying to snuffle away money from our household budget to pay for a new one. We've spent out over £500 during this time on having it repaired when a new boiler costs from around £750 + fitting so there's no point throwing good money after it any more. I worked out we could save (a conservative) 25% on our current energy bills if we replaced it, which fits into our goal of overall paying less for our household bills every year. Despite the initial outlay, it seemed a no-brainer so in two weeks time, our lovely heating engineer Alan is coming to put us in a new condensing/ combination boiler.
We considered waiting until the Government's Green Deal Scheme comes in sometime in October, which would have allowed us to spread the cost of the work over the course of several years and pay it back through our utilities bills, but we felt that it is likely that only large providers would be doing the work and we could end up paying a lot more for the job. A nice friendly independent Gas Safe registered (used to be the Corgi scheme) engineer would be better value for money and after quotes it transpired he was - about half the cost of one of the 'big' energy providers.
By the way, I forgot to mention before that at the end of July we took advantage of a grant scheme through the Mark Group to have the walls of our three-bed semi done for £85, which will also save us a small amount on our yearly energy bills. The Mark Group also does loft insulation, but we insulated our own loft a couple of winters ago. It wasn't a pleasant job, but thanks to an amazing deal with npower we obtained each roll of insulation for £1, so it ended up costing us under £20 and a day's labour to lay it and board the loft.
If you haven't yet had your loft or walls insulated, it's one of the easiest and cheapest ways to save money on your bills. Every winter the big DIY chains have a deal on their insulation - often BOGOF - and that often includes the eco-friendly stuff. In the past I've seen 170mm thick rolls that cover a 5m2 area for less than £4. Cavity wall insulation you won't be able to do yourself and will have to call someone in to do it. Even so, the amount you will save by having it done will be well worth it.
And another 25% saving on our energy bills a year means another small chunk of money to put towards savings and paying off the mortgage.
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