The residential park home that I rent has had an electric boiler installed to replace the oil combi boiler that was deemed beyond economical repair (mainly because it needed to be disconnected and pulled out from the wall to get at the low pressure copper water pipe to be fixed/replaced and then be re-installed , If I owned the property and thus the boiler I reckon I could have fixed it in situ , I would certainly have tried first anyway!)
My first comment when told , was that the first thing the next owner would have to do is rip that out and put an oil boiler in due to the running costs, (I did not know what type of electric boiler or how it was to be wired or controlled until after the new boiler was delivered). The plot is not big enough for a bulk LPG tank to be installed far enough away from the park home so oil is the only realistic option.
The old oil combi boiler was rated at 14.7-21 KW of heat output shared with the radiators and instant hot water supply, the new boiler has a max radiator heating output of 9KW and separate hot water tank (180 litres) with 2 separate 3KW immersion heaters (only one can be run at once) one at the bottom and one 2 thirds of the way up. The Bottom immersion element is supposed to be wired to a dedicated off peak supply, that would only be live during the set off peak hours which is not an option here, so its been wired off the 32A MCB kitchen ring main.
I think its not an appropriate form of heating/hot water for the property, but have done some tests (so many alternative facts about these days, just needed to confirm the rules of maths and physics had not actually changed
)The park home has an internal area of approx 90 Sq meters , 11 windows and 2 doors , I don't think that 9KW is sufficient heat output for the winter , and it takes hours to heat the place up, if the radiators were balanced it would help equal the heat around the place. Not all the rads have any way to easily adjust their flow rates (pliers and spanners required) , and most of those that in theory do the TRV's dont actually work.
Due to the boiler water tank being designed for a dedicated off peak supply there is no way to time control the water heating , the top element (boost) can in theory only be operated if the bottom one is switched on (I can get round that as the element power supply has a separate isolator switch to the control circuit (hot water control circuit comes from main heating supply),but the boost element can only be switched on via a none latching (in the on position) switch that runs the top element for 1 Hour via an internal none adjustable timer. There is know way of knowing how much hot water is available or what temperature it is at, unless you run the water heater 24/7 365 which I am not prepared to do.
Even if you ignore the fact that if I used it my heating and hot water fuel costs would have quadrupled , its still crap and it gets worse.
The park home has a main electric supply with a 100amp fuse in a box with the meter , this then goes to a 40Amp RCD protected 10SWA cable that runs under the home and into the main consumer unit (until very recently it was a 60amp supply, but after the latest EICR it was downgraded to 40Amp) . The main hot water immersion element that pulls 13.5Amps comes off of this 40 Amp supply , leaving only 26.5 amps for everything else including the oven which can pull 11.6 Amps (my readings taken using a clamp meter round one of the meter tails).
The ringmain that provides the supply for the main hotwater immersion element is the kitchen 32Amp MCB , which also has to provide power for Extractor fan,fridge freezer,freezer,kettle,toaster,microwave,washing machine and tumble dryer.
The main boiler 9KW (37.5 Amps) and boost water heater element 3KW (13.5 Amps) are supplied via a separate 16SWA cable protected by a 60 Amp RCD in the meter box.
So what do yo think appropriate heating and hot water solution or not.
