Which? names best boiler brands

Boiler manufacturers Vaillant and Worcester have been named as the two most reliable brands by the Consumers’ Association magazine Which?

2,800 members who had had a condensing boiler installed since April 2005 were asked how the boiler had performed, how satisfied they were with it and – the key test – whether they would recommend the brand to a friend.

Vaillant and Worcester performed best of all the 12 brands, each scoring customer satisfaction scores of 83%. Only 26% of the sample Vaillant customers reported problems and Worcester was a close second with 29%.

Vokera’s score of 29% was similarly good, but from a far smaller sample.

Satisfaction scores for Alpha were 74% and Baxi, Glow-worm, Potterton and Vokera scored 73% each.

British Gas, Ferroli, Halstead and Ideal fared slightly worse with scores of 68%, 67%, 66% and 64% respectively.

At the bottom of the table, Keston received the lowest score of all – 47%. A massive 76% of Keston owners in the sample said they had had problems, compared with 34% overall. Problems included leaks, noisy operation and the boiler switching itself off.

Best buys were named as the Baxi Duo-tec combi 28HE, Glow-worm Ultrcom 24 hxi, Vaillant ecoTEC Plus 824/831, Ferroli Optimax 25 OV and Potterton Gold C24 HE.