Pros and Cons of Combi-Boilers

Combi boilers provide hydronic home heating and endless hot water at the same time. While combination boilers have serious advantages over traditional floor-standing boilers and storage tank water heaters, they may not be ideal in all circumstances. Keep reading to learn about the pros and cons of combi boilers, and whether it’s worth making the switch!

Advantages of Combi Boilers

The biggest benefits of getting a combi boiler are that you’ll replace two large appliances with one compact unit, reduce energy consumption for home heating and hot water, never run out of hot water, and have less ongoing maintenance to deal with. Let’s take a closer look at each of these advantages: 

Combi Boilers Take Up Less Space

Traditional floor-standing boilers and tank-style water heaters occupy significant square footage. Navien combi-boilers are compact, wall-hung units that will free up a lot of space in your home!

Navien Combi-Boilers Are Highly Efficient

Navien condensing combi-boilers have a patented stainless steel heat exchanger that recovers heat from exhaust gas which would otherwise be lost. This means our combi-boilers are not only highly energy efficient, they’re better for the environment because of reduced CO2 emissions.

When you replace an older, mid-efficiency conventional boiler and tank hot water heater with a combi-boiler you’ll enjoy lower energy bills as well as a smaller carbon footprint.

Combi Boilers Provide Endless Hot Water On Demand

Navien combi-boilers supply hot water on demand for as long as you need it. Unlike storage tank water heaters, you don’t have to worry about running out of hot water when you need to run the dishwasher, do laundry, and use the shower.

Navien Combi-Boilers Are Low-Maintenance

Navien combi-boilers require less annual maintenance compared to maintaining both a traditional boiler and separate water heater.

What If Your Home Uses Forced-Air Heating?

If your home uses forced-air heating (rather than hydronic heating) you can benefit by upgrading your tank-type water heater with a high efficient Navien NPE or NPN series gas tankless water heater. Navien tankless gas water heaters will provide you with high efficiency and reduced emissions giving you the peace of mind of endless hot water and minimize your carbon footprint.

Myth: Combi-Boilers Can’t Supply Endless Hot Water in Large Households

Many articles claim a major drawback of combi-boilers is that they aren’t suitable for large homes with high hot water demand.

The truth is, Navien combi-boilers generate enough hot water to run up to 3 showers and a dishwasher, all at the same time! This is possible thanks to a built-in DHW (domestic hot water) module with a flat plate heat exchanger that offers one of the highest flow rates in the industry: 5.4 GPM at a 70°F temperature rise. 

Depending on your hot water demand, Navien combi-boilers can cascade up to 15 Navien NPE-2 tankless gas water heaters for increased DHW output.

Our NFC-H combi-boiler is designed for both commercial use as well as today’s larger progressive homes. It satisfies all the home heating and hot water requirements typical of large homes, and can even be cascaded with our NPE tankless water heaters if you have extraordinarily high demand.

Learn more about the benefits of our high-performance NCB-H combi boiler, as well as our commercial-grade NCF-H fire tube combi-boiler, which has the highest heating and DHW performance ever built into a combi-boiler.