Indirect hot water cylinder advice

[TriggerSlab]

Hoping you folks can advise please.
My indirect cylinder is heated from 15mm pipes that go in to a calorifier coil (? see pics) where the electric immersion usually goes. It's been slowly leaking at the connections for several years(!). I tried to tighten them a bit but it just made it worse.

The whole thing's rubbish and I suspect the coil is sludged up because it's really inefficient. Having removed the cylinder, I discovered it has connections for a proper indirect heating coil (they're not stopped off).

The gas boiler's quite old but OK, and I'm loathed to have it replaced with a combi because of the expense and the uncertainty about the future of gas/heat pumps etc. A combi would make sense - the main shower is electric, so the hot water requirement is very modest (it's a one bedroom flat).

1) I presume the calorifier was fitted as a repair, possibly when the main coil went wrong? There's no other reason for it?
2) If I fit a new cylinder, can I use the existing 15mm pipes to the heating coil in the new cylinder? The flow pipe gets reduced to 15mm straight after the Y-valve - is that right?
3) Anything else?

Many thanks for any advice.

 

[Exedon]

That's what used to be called a 'hot rod'
Ripped out a good few! It would be better to have 22mm to coil on a new cylinder but 15mm will work at a push.
We use the Gledhill stainless steel replacement cylinders good price decent performance coil and easy to use.

 

[TriggerSlab]

Just the information I was looking for! Much appreciated.

 

[gas112]

if the original coil had gone then water would be leaking out of the unsealed connections . the hot rod (blade) was probably in the existing cylinder many years ago and they re used it because too lazy to pipe up the coil .
New cylinders are around 300 quid now . i would reuse the existing after removing the old blade seal use an immersion plug or stick an immersion heater in .

 

[TriggerSlab]

if the original coil had gone then water would be leaking out of the unsealed connections . the hot rod (blade) was probably in the existing cylinder many years ago and they re used it because too lazy to pipe up the coil .
New cylinders are around 300 quid now . i would reuse the existing after removing the old blade seal use an immersion plug or stick an immersion heater in .

Thank you very much. I was wondering why they did it that way. Didn't occur to me that the cylinder was newer than the hot rod. I haven't ordered a new cylinder yet - I'll have another look at the old one and see if I can make it work the way it should have been done. Cheers...