Most British homes will fit one more boiler. Some should not.
Primary question · My boiler is on its last legs. Is a like-for-like replacement the honest answer, or should I be looking at a heat pump?
The honest framework is uncomfortably simple. If your home is genuinely poorly insulated, the boiler is failing this week, and a heat-pump install is not feasible before winter, replace the boiler and use the next five years on the fabric. If your home is already EPC C or better, and your gas bill is north of £1,500 a year, the £7,500 BUS grant has quietly tipped the maths toward a heat pump for most households of that kind.
A UK home where the boiler has reached the end of its serviceable life and a heat-pump retrofit is not realistic within the next twelve months.
£1,900 to £3,200 for a like-for-like combi replacement in 2026, with relocations and unvented cylinder upgrades pushing toward £5,500.
- The replacement is straightforward and the parts arrive next day
- Modern condensing combis are quieter and more efficient than the unit you are replacing
- A 10-year warranty is now standard at registered installs
- You commit to gas for the unit's lifetime, with rising standing charges and policy risk after 2030
- Oversizing remains the industry default, and it quietly raises your bill every winter
Ask any quoting installer to show you a heat-loss calculation in writing, not a sizing guess based on the old badge.
Boilers are not a wrong answer in 2026, but they are increasingly a default answer rather than a considered one. The households that regret a replacement are not the ones whose new boiler failed; they are the ones who replaced a healthy one without weighing the alternative.
Run the Home Comfort Score
It will tell you whether your fabric is closer to heat-pump-ready than you think.