Boiler Conversion East Kilbride

East Kilbride was designated Scotland’s first new town in 1947, and a great deal of what followed was built quickly, to pattern, and to the heating standards of the day. Thousands of those homes are still running the system they were built with: a back boiler sitting behind the living-room fire, a hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard, and a header tank in the loft. We have been taking those systems out for over 30 years, which is long enough to know what is behind the fire before the dust sheets go down.

They were reliable in their time. But a back boiler runs at roughly half the efficiency of a modern condensing combi, it heats a tank of water whether you need it or not, and parts availability is now genuinely poor. Most of the ones we remove are between thirty and fifty years old.

Converting means the fire and boiler come out of the living room, the cylinder and tanks disappear, and you get hot water on demand from a unit on the kitchen wall. You also get back an airing cupboard and, usually, a chimney breast you can finally do something with.

What happens on the day

The morning is removal and first fix. Dust sheets go down through the living room and hall, the fire and back boiler come out, and the chimney is swept, capped and made safe. The cylinder and loft tanks are drained and taken out, and we run the new gas, water and condensate pipework to wherever the combi is going, usually a kitchen wall.

The afternoon is the boiler itself. The unit goes on, the flue is installed, the system is filled, flushed and dosed with inhibitor, and a magnetic filter goes on the return if you have chosen to add one. We then commission the boiler, balance the radiators and set up the controls with you.

You will be without heating and hot water for most of the day, and back on by the evening. Where the flue route or the gas run turns out to be more involved, the job can run into a second day, and we will say so before we start rather than on the morning. If anyone in the house is elderly or unwell, tell us when you book and we will leave temporary heating.

The bits other quotes leave out

Conversions start at £1,695 fully installed. They are also where surprise charges most often appear on other people’s invoices, because there is genuinely more to the job than hanging a new boiler. Our fixed price covers all of it:

• Gas supply upsizing: most back boilers ran on 15mm pipe. A modern combi generally needs 22mm to the meter, and that run is included.
• Chimney capping: swept, capped and vented properly so the flue is sealed and the breast does not go damp.
• Cylinder and tank removal: both loft tanks, the cylinder, and all the redundant primary pipework, taken away and recycled.
• System conversion: an open-vented gravity system becomes a sealed pressurised one, which means new valves, an expansion vessel and a pressure relief route.
• Full power flush: decades of sludge in old steel radiators will wreck a new heat exchanger, so a power flush is included rather than optional.
• Making good: we leave the hearth and cupboard tidy and capped. Plastering and decorating are yours, and we will say so plainly rather than implying otherwise.

Other conversions we do

Back boiler to combi is the most common, but it is not the only conversion. We also handle regular-to-system upgrades, where the loft tanks go but a cylinder stays for a house with several bathrooms, and system-to-combi where a cylinder is no longer needed.

In the newer parts of East Kilbride, Stewartfield, Lindsayfield and Jackton, the more common job is swapping a vented cylinder for an unvented one, which brings every tap and shower up to mains pressure without touching the boiler at all.

A combi is the right answer in almost every East Kilbride home. It costs less to install than a system boiler and cylinder, it carries a far longer warranty, and it is a great deal more efficient — which is money back on the gas bill every year you own it.

Is your home a conversion candidate?

If you have a fire in the living room with a boiler behind it, a cylinder in a cupboard upstairs and one or two tanks in the loft, you are on a back boiler system and conversion is almost certainly worth doing.

The other tell-tale is timing: if your hot water runs on a timer and you have to plan showers around it, you are heating a stored tank. A combi removes that entirely.

Send us a photo of the fire and the cupboard through the quote form and we will tell you what you have got and what converting it would cost, without sending anyone to the house. We have been in business in this town for many years, with over 6000 happy East Kilbride customers behind us.