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Which domestic boiler brands would heating engineers recommend?

Which domestic boiler brands would heating engineers recommend?

about 6 years ago Empty Jason Thornhill

Boiler Engineer Copy

A recent study of domestic heating engineers by Which? revealed the brands they were most likely to recommend and the factors behind their decision.

As well as gathering the independent opinions of engineers, researchers also sought the views of over 9,000 people who had heating boilers installed in their homes.

The survey looked at build quality, availability of parts and spares, ease of repairing and servicing and how likely respondents were to recommend a particular brand.

Worcester Bosch came out top for reliability, availability of parts and spares, scoring 92% overall.

Close behind was Viessmann, which  scored better than Worcester Bosch for ease of servicing and came in at 84% overall.

Vaillant was one of the few brands engineers said they went out of their way to recommend scored 5 stars for ease of servicing, achieving 78% overall. There was then a big jump to the next brand which was Ideal at 58%, closely followed by Baxi.

Vaillant was top of the table for the category “fixing a common fault”, which was based on comments from engineers who had repaired or installed a boiler of that brand frequently in the last six months. The brands were scored on how easy it was to replace a domestic hot-water heat exchanger. Also scoring highly in this category were Ideal, Baxi, Potterton and Glow-worm.

Consumers were asked to score the brands on reliability, based on the number of faults boilers developed and taking into account the age of boiler. Coming top were Worcester Bosch and Viessman, followed equally by Vaillant, Ideal, Alpha, Glow-worm and Ariston.

The survey also looked at oil boilers with Grant achieving the highest ranking, closely followed by Worcester Bosch.

Although much of our work is in the commercial boiler sector, we also work with domestic boiler manufacturers and the survey gives an interesting insight into the factors that matter most to heating engineers.

Reliability, servicing, availability of parts and quality all contribute to brand perception, both for consumers and engineers. Our own research into the best heating manufacturers to work for has found that those manufacturers that are perceived as having the best quality products and the strongest brand are often those that are also regarded as the best to work for.