Central Heating Installation & Upgrades
Full system installs, radiator upgrades, power flushes, smart controls and zoning. Designed for the property, commissioned to manufacturer spec, warranted in writing.
10+ Years
experience
Full System
warranties
Smart Controls
trained
Fixed Price
quotes
Service Overview
Central heating installation covers the entire system that delivers warmth and hot water around your home — boiler, pipework, radiators, valves, pump, controls and (where present) hot water cylinder. An upgrade ranges from new TRVs and smart thermostats through to full system replacement and radiator re-sizing for an extension.
Homeowners extending or refurbishing. Anyone with a 20+ year old system that's expensive to run and unreliable. Families with cold rooms that no amount of radiator-bleeding fixes. People moving from gravity-fed systems to mains-pressure unvented setups for stronger showers throughout the house.
Before the system fails entirely, and ideally before winter. A full install or major upgrade is a 2-5 day job — best planned in spring or summer, when boilers are widely in stock and engineer availability is at its best. Smart control upgrades can be retrofitted in a day at almost any time of year.
A central heating system is bigger than the sum of its parts. A new boiler on a poorly designed system underperforms badly; old radiators undersized for a well-insulated extension leave rooms cold; mechanical controls running a modern modulating boiler waste 15-20% of the appliance's potential efficiency. A proper system design integrates all of it.
The Cost of Waiting
What we routinely walk into on 25-year-old systems:
Our Process
01
We visit, measure rooms, calculate heat loss, assess existing pipework and discuss preferences (zoning, smart controls, radiator styles).
02
Written quote including boiler/cylinder choice, radiator schedule, control specification, warranty and timeline.
03
Typically 2-5 days. Floors protected, water and gas isolated correctly, pipework cleanly routed (and concealed where practical).
04
Full power flush, fresh inhibitor, magnetic filter installed, every radiator balanced, controls programmed and tested.
05
Walk-through of all controls, manuals, warranty registration with the manufacturer, Gas Safe Building Notice filed.
Why Choose On-Tap
Properly sized radiators on a clean system warm rooms 30-50% faster than a tired old setup.
Combined boiler + controls + flush upgrades typically cut annual gas use by 25-35%.
Up to 18-year manufacturer cover available on qualifying new installations.
Smart zoning lets you heat the rooms you use, when you use them — and stop heating the rest.
Magnetic filtration, modern inhibitor, correctly sized pipework — your system is set up for the next 15+ years.
We won't over-engineer. The right kit for the property, not the most expensive option on the shelf.
In Depth
There's far more to a good install than choosing a boiler. Here's what separates a well-designed system from a bodged one.
Every room loses heat at a calculable rate, depending on size, wall construction, glazing, exposure and ventilation. A correctly sized radiator delivers slightly more than that loss at design conditions (typically -3°C external, 21°C internal, 70/50°C flow/return). Under-sized radiators leave rooms cold; over-sized waste materials and money. Our quotes include a room-by-room calculation, not a glance at the existing radiators.
A system can have the right boiler and the right radiators, and still perform terribly if pipework is undersized or unbalanced. Microbore (8/10mm) installations in particular need careful balancing to ensure flow reaches the furthest radiators. Where pipework needs upgrading, we plan runs neatly — usually under floors, sometimes boxed — and always with proper isolation valves for future maintenance.
A central heating system worth installing in 2026 deserves controls that match. We install Hive, Nest, tado°, Drayton Wiser and Vaillant vSMART, with full multi-zone control where the property and customer want it. For larger homes, splitting heating into 2-3 zones with independent schedules often saves more energy than any single boiler upgrade.
Existing systems being upgraded should always be cleaned before a new boiler is fitted. A power flush combined with a chemical cleaner removes accumulated magnetite sludge, scale and debris. Once flushed, a magnetic filter (MagnaClean Pro 2 or Adey Pro 3) is fitted to catch new sludge, and fresh inhibitor (Sentinel X100 or similar) is dosed to manufacturer specification. Skipping any of these steps voids most boiler warranties — and shortens system life by years.
Highly variable — a like-for-like boiler swap with flush starts around £2,400. A complete system overhaul (new boiler, cylinder, radiators, controls) on a 3-4 bed house typically lands between £6,500 and £11,000. Free survey, fixed-price written quote.
Smart controls retrofit: half a day. Boiler swap + flush: 1-2 days. Full system replacement: 3-5 days. We'll always give you a timeline before booking.
Usually just the day(s) of active works on the boiler. For longer installs we can usually keep heating running until the swap-day itself.
If you're putting a new boiler on an old system: yes — and most manufacturers require it for warranty validation. If your system is under 5 years old and clean, a chemical clean and filter install may be sufficient.
Yes — modern manufacturer warranties require one. It catches magnetite sludge before it reaches the boiler's heat exchanger, dramatically extending appliance life. The MagnaClean Pro 2 or Adey Pro 3 are our defaults.
Usually, yes — provided mains pressure and flow rate are adequate. We test these on the survey and recommend honestly. Sometimes a system boiler with an unvented cylinder is the better answer.
It depends on the home and how you use it. For most properties we recommend a load-compensating smart thermostat (Hive Heat, Nest Learning, Drayton Wiser, Vaillant vSMART) paired with TRVs in every room — and zoning where the layout supports it.
Bedford, Milton Keynes, Luton, Hitchin, Flitwick, Biggleswade, Barton-le-Clay, Stevenage and across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
Related Services
A fixed-price quote in writing, a Gas Safe engineer on site, and the job done right first time.
