Owning a dependable boiler for your home isn’t something everyone is immediately sold on. Sometimes, salespeople are great at recommending an HVAC system with visible ducting all around the ceiling areas and expensive yearly maintenance costs running into the hundreds of pounds that are better suited to a commercial environment. Other times, homeowners mistakenly believe that a boiler is an old-fashioned way of heating a home and providing hot water on demand. Well, that’s just plain wrong.
Here are just some of the many benefits of having a well-maintained and reliable boiler installed in your home.
Boilers Are More Reliable Compared to Other Heating Systems
The basic boiler system operates with fewer moving parts than other heating systems, such as HVAC, that use heat pumps or old furnaces. Fewer mechanical parts mean fewer things that can go wrong, break internally, or get misaligned, requiring maintenance or fixing new parts.
Thinking about forced aid heating systems where the air is heated and distributed requires a blowing fan to heat the air and several motors for active distribution. Some are so old and inefficient with a furnace that getting parts for them should they break becomes a nightmare.
Combi boilers, on the other hand, only have a circulator pump as the main mechanical part that must move within their systems. These are easier for engineers to stock and replace because once they diagnose the problem, they know quickly the parts they’ll need to fix it.
Boilers Are More Affordable Over Their Lifetime
A boiler is simpler to install and get running. Once it’s installed, it often lasts longer than competing systems. A good boiler can operate well for 2-3 decades.
When comparing their lifespan to heat pumps used in HVAC systems, they only last 10+ years, and 15 years if you’re lucky. With a furnace, they can survive 15-20 years, but they are less efficient to operate and harder to maintain, which plays against their survivability record.
Boilers Are Easier and Less Costly to Fix
Due to the few moving parts, boilers are quicker to fix. Engineers can fix them much quicker than with complicated HVAC or heaters with complex systems. Sometimes, simplicity and efficiency are a blessing in disguise!
It’s a good idea to get a boiler inspected yearly to check for any issues. This way, a possible breakdown can be avoided by early replacement of a suspect part. Boilers can also receive tune-ups by adjusting them to improve their running and to run without any trouble for another year.
Boilers Provide Consistent Heat Spread Throughout the Home
Forced air systems that add heat to the air and blow the heat out of their heaters suffer from a phenomenon where the heat rises quickly to the ceiling. This is inefficient and requires each room where the heating is turned on to be continually reheated to feel warm enough, especially in the colder winter months.
Using a boiler, heat radiates up from the heated pipes which is a more natural process. The heat which radiates in this manner distributes more evenly and is attracted to objects in the room. This prevents the heat from being lost to the ceiling in rapid fashion reducing the need to reheat each room repeatedly to stay warm.
Boilers Heat Up Rooms Faster
All things being equal, with a boiler-based system, radiant heat is distributed quickly and covers the whole room sooner. Cold areas in a room are no longer an issue because the pipes run throughout the floor—not just in one part of it. With radiators in the room, they can be positioned in more than one location to increase the heat levels and radiate heat out sooner, too.
With a more consistent, faster heat source, getting the chills is avoided. This often makes boilers and radiant heat sources preferable when comparing how it feels to live in a home with this type of system installed.
Boilers Are Energy Efficient
Boilers have a reputation for being less energy efficient. That’s actually just marketing from companies selling heated air or furnace-based systems. The reality is that radiant heat is more effective at eliminating cold spots and the warmth lingering at the level where people occupy the room—not at the ceiling—so homes feel consistently warmer.
Radiant heat provides warmth throughout a home. It’s also possible to use sophisticated control systems to restrict which rooms benefit from heating at a given time, but when unrestricted, every room stays consistently warmer. There is no going into the bedroom and bundling up because the heating didn’t reach that far.
By avoiding the chills and feeling consistently warmer, reaching for the temperature controls isn’t needed as often. Your body gets comfortable at a certain heat level and settles in. Making expensive temperature adjustments to increase the heat level is no longer needed, and as a result, you save money on the heating bill. You also get sick less often.
Boilers Provide Hot Water on Demand
Every homeowner requires hot water on demand. They also want enough to run a bath or shower and wash the dishes in the morning. Boilers not only provide warmth throughout the home but also heat the water that runs through to the bathrooms’ washbasin, shower, and bathtub and into the kitchen, too. It’s there when you need it because it’s ready when you are.
Boilers Prevent Property Damage
Bacteria in the home, like mould, develop in wet and/or cold conditions. Similarly, damp in the walls most often develops when a part of a home isn’t heated for long periods of time. This is a significant issue with older properties and heating systems that weren’t installed in every room to save money.
With boilers and radiant heat, every room benefits from some warmth. No room is left to sit in the cold, where property damage can occur through erosion of the walls because of damp or bacteria build-up. Should these develop, they are very costly to resolve, and in a weight-bearing wall, continued deterioration of the wall support structure could be dangerous when unresolved.
Cover Plans Can Support Boilers.
While boilers are not as troublesome to maintain as other heating systems, they do need maintenance and sometimes can go wrong like any other system. Because of that, it’s a good idea to have a cover in place, such as the Certi Value+ boiler cover plan. This option is recommended because it covers an engineer call to attend to your property, assess the issue, and fix boilers that need a part replacement to get them up and running again.
Certi, which has been in the business for many years, also provides a complete range of plans, including their value+ home emergency cover. You can choose one of these plans to benefit from more extensive support for your central heating, plumbing, electronics, pest control, and other issues.
Boilers are a less fussy, more reliable heating and hot water solution than other alternatives. They also tend to be more energy efficient, which interests many homeowners who find their quarterly energy bill rather alarming.