Keep Above
Repair or replace the boiler
A boiler that's stopped heating, or limps between breakdowns, leaves the standard pair: repair this one or replace it. Put in what the fix would cost with the extra years you'd expect from it, and a replacement with the years it would last — each is spread over its own life to a cost per year. No winner is declared; the estimates and the call are yours.
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Comes off the replacement
Put in what the fix would cost and what a replacement would cost. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Repairing | Replacing | |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | — | — |
| Running costs over its life | — | — |
| Total over its life | — | — |
| How long that covers | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a month | — | — |
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
About this calculator
What counts as the repair cost for a boiler?
The whole of the quote — call-out, diagnosis where it's charged, the pump, valve, heat exchanger or board that failed, and labour. The cost per year spreads that full amount over the extra years you think the repair would buy.
What goes into running costs a year here?
Where the old boiler and a replacement would use noticeably different amounts of gas or power across a year, that difference belongs in the running-costs boxes; servicing that only one side would need belongs there too. Where both sides would cost much the same to run, $0 in both keeps the comparison to the up-front figures.
What is the matching time?
The number of years the repair would have to carry the boiler for its cost per year to match the replacement's — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more. When running the old one already costs more each year than the whole replacement does all-up, no length of time would match, and the page says so.
What about selling or scrapping the old one?
Whatever the old boiler would fetch — scrap, or a trade-in where an installer offers one — comes off the replacement's cost. For many units that is close to nothing, and at $0 the box simply does nothing.