Does Our Industry Lack Morals

I am returning to the subject of the Retro Boiler Labels.

We see the term Energy Efficiency used a lot these days, but I think the term is been misused, or misunderstood, it is not been looked at from the most important point, the energy costs to the members of the public, Energy Efficiency seems to be more focused on the Governments unachievable targets on reducing emissions.

The latest Retro Boiler Label is yet another gimmick in my opinion just to increase boiler sales, using the "Energy Efficiency" phrase to try and fool the public, this will be driven by manufacturers and Merchants alike, the latest figures show a drop in boiler sales, so a new tactic had to be found to try and boost sales and its pushed onto installers to acheive it.

The public are not interested in so called Energy Efficiency unless it saves them money on their fuel costs, just having an A Rated boiler fitted does not automatically mean your Gas costs will be reduced, and I think it is very misleading to suggest this to the public, there is more to a heating system than the boiler, there are also other factors that should be looked at first before suggesting changing the boiler to save customers money on their energy bills, instead of pushing the Retro Boiler Label nonsense the HHIC should be promoting good and honest advice, in my opinion the following is what should be promoted to the public before pushing to have a new boiler

1. Get the public more aware about looking at changing their energy suppliers, simply changing your supplier and getting on a better tariff can save quite a large amount of money annually.

2. Raise awareness of insulation, "Keep The Heat In", increasing loft insulation and getting cavity walls insulated is a very cost effective way to reduce on energy consumption.

3. Windows, if a property has single glazed windows, or old poorly installed double glazing this will lead to increased energy costs, I always believe that working to improve the thermal envelope of a building is far more important than having an A Rated boiler, you could fit what you consider the best energy efficient boiler in the world and connect it to the best heating system in the world, but if the thermal envelope of the building is poor and heat loss is high, then running costs of the heating system will be much higher than they should be and make the installation of an A Rated boiler pointless.

4. Upgrading heating controls, simply fitting new heating controls that are more accurate and more user friendly will help reduce running costs, I go to quite a few properties where the time clock no longer works and so the user has the heating on constant just using the old room thermostat to control the system, a room stat that probably is quite out of calibration on its room temperature reading capability

5. Make the public more aware of the importance of having their boiler serviced annually and as an industry we need to encompass the whole system as part of annual servicing, check water quality, expansion vessel pre-charge pressure, on systems that you are servicing for the first time check that the expansion vessel is sized sufficiently for the system, bleed radiators, checking for possible causes of any suspected oxygen ingress, check that the radiators are balanced and that any TRV's are functioning correctly

Personally I would never replace a working boiler in the name of "Energy Efficiency" because I do not believe it is an efficient use of the homeowners money, simply saying that an old but working boiler is costing them money in energy use and then saying they should pay out in the region of £2,000.00 and upwards as a means to save money makes no sense to me.

So to me this Retro Boiler Label is a pointless gimmick and one I will ignore, I think Paul Ferguson on Twitter summed it up very well when he Tweeted "Good engineers will advise when a boiler has reached the end of its working life, Cowboys find opportunities" well in my opinion the Retro Boiler Label been promoted by HHIC is an opportunity for the cowboys to replace boilers unnecessarily, but will the manufacturers and merchants care, I doubt it, as they will be selling boilers

Introducing the Retro Boiler Label, More nonsense

I am seeing the hashtag #RetroBoilerLabel been thrown around on Social Media, the likes of HHIC supporting it, I'm sorry in my opinion this is just more poorly thought out nonsense and who exactly is this aimed at helping, no one as far as I can see apart from the boiler manufacturers who would be looking at selling more boilers.

If someone can't afford to heat their home then they are in fuel poverty and should get assistance to make their bills more affordable, there are some schemes around that are supposed to do this, but from what I hear these schemes don't always get the target fuel poverty people.

This latest nonsense, Retro Boiler label, is expecting service engineers to label old boilers they service or attend to fix a breakdown with the A-G label, classifying the boiler, E,F or G.WHY? if the boiler is working and the customer can afford the bills whats the problem..... I will tell you the problem, there has been a drop in boiler sales, so what do they do, they come up with stupid schemes like this to try and increase boiler sales, they want us as service engineers to try and shame people into having a new boiler, by labelling their boilers as old and out of date, what next, are we going to start putting a big red X on their front doors like they did during the black plague.

I have an idea for you, if you want to increase your boiler sales, how about you as manufacturers put your hands in YOUR pockets and stop trying to use installers and making us look the bad guys, why don't you start cutting the price of your boilers instead of always putting them up, how about taking a little less profit, what about offering a discount to the homeowner for using your boiler rather then a rivals, boiler manufacturers should compete more with each other, there are many better ways to increase your sales rather than trying to shame people to buy a new boiler.

I am personally of the opinion if a boiler is working no matter how old then its efficient, yes if its constantly breaking down and costing money to keep repairing it, then yes, probably cheaper to replace in the long run, but simply telling people they should replace a working boiler just because its old and is maybe a G rated appliance, so what, its still efficient as its working, bought and paid for and you only pay for the gas, but we are supposed to fool people into thinking they are better off spending in excess of £2,000.00 to have a new boiler fitted, to maybe save £100 a year in gas and this is just an estimate, well now they have to repay or re-save £2k and whereas before they were only paying for gas, so if you take this figure of £100 saving on gas a year it will take 10 years just to be back to square 1 and by then going by modern boiler standards they may require a new boiler, I have come across boilers still working well after 40 years, why would I tell them to replace it just because it may now be classified as G rated.

If we truly want to reduce peoples running costs then we need some real honest schemes out there, we need peoples properties surveyed and honest advice given, not lets just get the best commission from this property, as far as I see it, the MOST important factor in any property to saving energy is insulation, KEEP THE HEAT IN, this should always be the starting point, there is absolutely no point in fitting a new boiler in the name of increasing efficiency if the property has a high heat loss, the same can be said for the heat emitters, if these are blocked or just poor performing sticking a new boiler on the end will not do much for the efficiency, we need to stop this nonsense of always targeting the boiler first as the cause of high fuel costs, there are many more things that should be addressed first, including checking what tariff people are on, adding insulation and changing energy supplier could be more than enough to reduce their bills significantly, so lets stop with the nonsense to generate more boiler sales for the manufacturers and merchants.

I think this Retro Boiler Label will go the same way as the Zombie Boiler nonsense and the ErP label, it will be ignored by most good quality installers who see it for what it is, a promotion to increase boiler sales