subject: Regular Boilers – Just One of the Guys [print this page] Regular Boilers Just One of the Guys Regular Boilers Just One of the Guys
Just how the title regular boilers came about is a little uncertain, but it doesn't reflect that well on a major part of the UK industry which is worth millions and supplies nearly every home in the UK with the heart of its central heating system.
Somehow the phrase regular boilers doesn't seem to do them justice, as though dismissing them as an afterthought, not worthy of mention and paling against their better known cousins, the Combi boilers.
But that's not fair. And perhaps their other title, traditional boilers, is more apt.
Regular boilers are based on a simple to understand technology that still supplies heat for around 50% of the country's housing stock. The Combi boilers might be the glory boys, but it's the regular boilers which have been doing all the hard work for many decades.
Their slightly mundane title comes down to the fact that in theory, it's a simple process of combusting an energy source to heat water and then store the resulting hot water in a water tank for later use by the central heating system, and the hot taps.
So, you have a cold water feed tank in the loft (high up to provide enough pressure to feed the boiler) which feeds into a boiler which has a number of burners and a heat exchanger. You combust the fuel (mostly gas, but could be oil, or a solid fuel) and the water is heated up, and then stored, or used, as necessary.
Simple. The clever bit comes in when you think about the efficiency of such systems to keep house warms and make best use of the energy supply.
The key problem for regular boilers, and which will prove their ultimate downfall in decades to come, is that they cannot compete with the efficiency of the combis. The key problem is, that a central heating system which has at its heart a regular boiler, and stores water for use, cannot be as efficient as a combi system. It can certainly use condensing technology to make it very efficient, but because it stores water, the laws of science say that water will gradually lose temperature, so all the energy used to produce the hot water in the first place, then gets wasted over the subsequent minutes that the water is stored.
Which is why the combi was brought in. The clever old combi boiler only heats the water when needed (when demanded by the hot water taps, or the central heating system). Thus, expensively produced hot water is not sitting there gradually losing its heat.
But the saving grace for regular boilers is that they are still the only viable options for very big properties, or small commercial premises. Try as they might, the clever old combis still find that scenario a little hard to cope with.
