M&E Building Service Engineers / Consultants

[dadofbud]

I'm banking on ever reliable PistonHeads community.

Can anyone point me to a current definative ruling regarding a change of the building regulations,that from 2015 the replacement of an existing commercial gas fired boiler witin a commercial property has to be a condensing boiler?

Using the usual search engines to access the Building Regs, I can't find a definative answer / ruling and I'm sure the criteria is still "May" become a regulation, although I'm being told by others its going to happen for certain, but they are reluctant / enable to substantiate their view.

Thanks in advance if anyone can clarify and steer me towards supporting documentation either way.

[smirkoff2000]

It comes from the Energy Related Products Directive which is due to come in force in 2015.

Basically, it may eliminate the installation of all high efficiency non-condensing boilers up to 400kW, which includes atmospheric, pre-mix and pressure jet boilers. In order to meet the criteria in Part L 2014 you are looking at a minimum of 94% part load and 86% full load efficiencies with a seasonal around 91%.

Some of the reasons people might be unsure is it isn't totally clear on how how aligned the new Part L 2014 and the ErP will be but most large manufacturers seem to be phasing out all but their highest performing low output non-condensing units.

[dadofbud]

Thanks Jonathan

That's very helpful.

At the risk of boring the rest of the Ph's community, this is going to be minefield.

Boiler replacement to existing properties it appears are targetted to achieve 92.5% seasonal effciency, which is a tall request other than condensing boilers.

As i'm sure you know condensing boilers are only supper effcient until they / the system reaches their optimum operating temperature until that time two things happen; they are gas hungry and the produce a lot water.

Most new to replace old installs suffer from base build gas supply sizing, and there is seldom enough gas volume to supply two or more boilers installe on high fire and and one or more boilers trip out on low gas pressure, which usually results in the manufactures commissioning engineers only commissioning the one boiler = bigger pipe work and or gas booster set, .

Existing flues tend not to be suitable for condensing boilers as prouce a lot of water, requiring complete new flue installation, expensive if you have an eight floor property and and 600mm twin wall flue, .

I can see commercial Landlords going VRF in preference boilers, especially multi-tenancy properties.
Thanks again

Bob

[mfmman]

Particularly frustrating since boiler replacement is often a 'distress' purchase not part of a lifecycle plan. Ideal then, to make that replacement 3 or 4 times as expensive as it might be