Thread: Freezing Brits steamed over new green boilers/Heaters

The new eco-friendly boilers mandated by the British government don't work in cold weather. Of course with global warming nobody will ever notice

December 30, 2010

Freezing Brits steamed over new green boilers

Phil Boehmke
20 Comments

Five years ago the global warming crowd and their comrades in the Labour Party mandated the use of new green technology boilers in Great Britain. Government and environmental experts said that the ‘condensing boilers’ would not only greatly reduce the consumer’s carbon footprint, but would also lower their heating bills. Saving money and saving the planet, what could be better?

The UK Daily Mail reports that during the recent record cold spell in Great Britain, tens of thousands of people were without heat due to a serious flaw in the new boiler’s design. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... eres-.html

British Gas is understood to have had 60,000 call-outs in Yorkshire alone. And the cost to call out a plumber? It can be between £ 200 to £ 300 on a bank holiday. And don’t forget about VAT.

‘We’ve had double the number of call-outs as in the same period last year,’ says Charlie Mullins, MD of Pimlico Plumbers in London, the country’s largest independent plumbing company.

“It is a massive problem. Some customers were ready to move out because their condensing boilers broke. If I had a choice, I’d put in a non-condensing boiler every time.â€

The total, practical implications of these new ecological ideas need to be studied further before they are recommended. Across my street, at the public school they planted new trees all the way around it and laid new sidewalks at the time. These trees are required to be certain species, by city ordinance. Because they didn't leave enough room for the fast growing trees the fifteen year old sidewalks (done by union labor of course) have numerous cracks in them and lifted sections, to boot. The trees ooze out some sort of sap---from all of the branches and leaves, it seems, at the end of every summer, for almost two months.