Trading since 1935, Baxi are seen as one of the market leaders with their dedication to innovation and development in the heating industry. Baxi boast a range of Combi, Heat Only, System and Back boiler systems. Most notably though would be their efforts with regards to the environment with an exciting range of Biomass solid fuel boilers which use pellets and wood.

With over 90% energy efficiency and a SEDBUK (Government energy efficiency system) grading of ‘A’, the majority of the Baxi boiler range are seen as attractive where the reduction of consumer bills are concerned particularly with their Heat Only boilers. The Baxi Solo HE remains to be the only single Heat Only boiler manufactured by Baxi and comes with a free 2 year manufacture warranty.

Baxi’s range of Combi boilers have also received acclaim with the Duo-tec Combi HE, winning the ‘Which?’ magazine best buy out of 34 boilers tested. The Duo Tec Combi comes with an attractive 2 year parts AND labour warranty. The most expensive Baxi Combi boiler is the Platinum Combi HE which comes with a five year warranty. At the other end of the scale is the Combi 105 which comes in at a lower retail price and a SEDBUK grade B to match.

Baxi also boast fitting their Bermuda range of back boilers in 9 out of 10 homes nationally. Despite not being the most poplar method of central heating, Baxi have sold over five million since production of the Bermuda range began.

British Gas partnered with Ceres Power back in 2005 and have been busy developing a fuel cell boiler, also known as a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) boiler which will not only heat your home but also generates electricity.

Conventional boilers convert gas into heat by burning it, the CHP unit works in a very different way by passing natural gas though a fuel cell which creates heat and electricity via a chemical process. The technology is not new but it’ll be the first time it’s to be used on large scale in UK domestic households.

British Gas is currently testing the unit in 30 UK homes and predicts the unit to be commercially available by 2010. Baxi may beat British Gas to it after recently launching their Ecogen CHP boiler which should be available early next year.

The new fuel cell CHP boilers have the potential of producing more electricity than required which could provide an opportunity for householders to sell the electricity back to British Gas. Smart Planet put this question to British Gas which said they had not yet decided if they would buy back unused energy.

British Gas are estimating that average annual savings could be as much as a quarter off a household gas and electricity bill using a modern high efficiency condensing boiler. The price of the new boiler has not yet been decided but will apparently be only slightly more than a modern condensing boiler with a payback of around 5 years.

Consumer website Which? has voted the Baxi Duo-tec Combi 28 HE condensing boiler as it’s best buy in the the boiler category. It was awarded a 5 star rating for it’s efficiency, features, NOx emissions and ease of installation. Which? rigorously tested 34 boilers for efficiency, ease of use and durability. Efficiency testing closely monitors gas and electricity consumption and how much gas each boiler converts into useable heat. In addition to this every boiler was rated by a Corgi engineer on ease-of-use, installation and servicing.

Which? commented…

” It’s one of the few boilers we’ve tested which reaches the very highest efficiency standards, matching its claims to meet the A Sedbuk standard. As well as offering excellent efficiency, this boiler is also reassuringly easy to use.”

Other boilers that were rated highly include…

• Potterton Gold C24 HE (combi condensing boiler)
• Vaillant ecoTEC plus 824 (combination condensing boiler)
• Vaillant ecoTEC plus 831 (combination condensing boiler)