@chansug ‘It’s yer Thermocouple Mate! I’ll troy to bendit back but, (whistles through teeth) could cost yer if it breaks…’

As to the radiators, it is never too early to swap the old smaller ones out - if you are changing them all, you may even be able to reduce the flow temperature on your gas boiler a little and relieve the load on the poor old thing! Regards, Toodles

Posted by: @chansug

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Our boiler man dried the circuit board with a hairdryer and it is working again.

Very sensible.

A damaged circuit board isn't a safety issue anyway.

This is precisely the sort of item which should be recovered from any boiler which is being decomissioned.
Wise heating-installers may hang onto them.

You're also likely to find 2nd-hand logic boards being offered on Ebay.
Enter your boiler model number and see what comes up.

Right, after much deliberation, I decided to sign up with Boxt for installation. They also gave me a fixed price quote. They will be installing a Vaillant arotherm plus unit with a 300L Vaillant hot water cylinder. Their initial calculation was 12kw unit which was too big for my property and hence they adjusted the quote to a 10kw unit subject to heat loss survey. Installation date is the first week of March. They will change upto 11 of my 18 radiators if needed. They require lots of photos of my meter, radiator, boiler etc which I will upload tomorrow.

I chose boxt after speaking to them at length and asking lots of questions related to the installation which I gained from this forum. They were very accommodating and gave me lots of time. Their reviews of heat pumps installs are very good on Trust Pilot are very good and @adrian here had a good experience with them too.

They are also installing one of the best heat pumps on the market. A comparative quote for similar install from one of my above options was coming to £9499 with my own radiator installs for 45c. Boxt are charging me £6299. 

Octopus were looking at June install which I didn't want to wait that long. Cosy 9 doesn't have enough reviews for me to say confidently that will be a good one for me with limited access to features.

I hope to keep everyone updated with details as I go along.

That does sound very reasonable. Hope all goes well. Definitely the way forward and I am sure you will be happy- despite the issues that cropped up with our install (most of which have been rectified now) we are pleased with ours and keeps our house very comfortable indeed, even in our 1970s house with poor insulation in certain parts.

Thanks @benson Let me know if I need to ask them anything during the survey. Who actually does the survey, is it Andy their renewable dept head or a third party? 

@chansug I don’t know about boxt. We used a local independent as ours was a little more bespoke and the likes of octopus etc weren’t as competitive for us.

@chansug for me the survey was done by the engineer that did the installation, but I think that is not a given and the install might be done by a different contractor. As you found Andy was quite responsive and helpful.

@adrian Yes they did confirm that they will be vetted by boxt. How is your ASHP performing so far? 

Also what is the benefit of so many photos? Will they design a system before the survey?