A celebratory year for Worcester – a look back at 2012 [Part 1]

As the year draws to a close it’s time to remember some of our highlights of 2012.

Many of you will be aware that the 14^th September 2012 marked our 50^th Anniversary. Cecil Duckworth set up Worcester Engineering way back in 1962, and the expert workforce that we have developed over the past half a century has meant that Worcester, Bosch Group has grown into the established company it is today.

To ensure we marked this special occasion properly Worcester launched a search for commemorative golden tickets, hidden in boilers nationwide. When the prized tickets were found installers were able to give their lucky customers £1,000 off the cost of their new boiler, as well as a five year manufacturers guarantee and free servicing for its lifetime. Big congratulations to the installers who found the tickets, as they also bagged themselves £200 worth of Bosch power tools.

Our 50^th anniversary also gave us the opportunity to join a number of installers who were also celebrating big anniversaries making 2012 a year of celebration. To help each of the firms celebrate, our local technical sales managers surprised the companies with chocolates and balloons to help get the party started. One of the most notable anniversaries was for Barclay Erskine Ltd who celebrated a massive 150 years in action.

We were was also proud to reward those who are committed to conserving the environment. At this year’s Environment 2020 awards, installers, builders and specifiers were commended for their outstanding work using high-efficiency technologies and installation best practice to help make customers properties more energy efficient.

2012 has been a truly memorable year for us. Reaching 50 years trading in today’s difficult economic environment is no mean feat. Here’s to the next 50!

To those celebrating, we wish you a wonderful Christmas, from all at Worcester, Bosch Group. Stay tuned for ‘A look back at 2012, Part 2′

Sue Pennington, Consumer Brand Manager at Worcester, Bosch Group.

4 ways to winterproof your home

As we start to prepare our Christmas wish-lists, the last thing you are likely to want to budget for is costly home repairs or increased insurance premiums caused by the cold weather. By carrying out these few simple checks you can make sure your house is ready for winter.

The best way, of course, is prevention not cure. By that we mean double checking heating pipes for cracks, having your boiler serviced and ensuring your heating system is well maintained. Planning ahead will also help you save money.

1. First things first, get your boiler serviced. Servicing your boiler has the same benefits as getting your car MOT’d. As well as saving money in the long run, you’ll have peace of mind that your boiler is working safely and unlikely to breakdown during the winter months. Book a service and get one of our accredited technicians to give it a health check it for you.

2. Once you’ve got your boiler sorted, check that your house is properly insulated. Even if your home is warm and cosy, it may still be losing valuable heat out of the roof or windows – and lost heat can also mean lost money. Did you know that by insulating your loft between 100mm and 270mm, you can save up to £175 per year [Energy Saving Trust]?  In addition, have a look for any draughts as this will indicate if there are gaps in your property which are letting cold air in and warm air out. Fitting draught excluders around the joins of windows and doors is low cost and will help save money on your fuel bills by keeping your house better insulated.

3. Water pipes can often freeze or burst during the winter months so we advise you check as much of your pipework as you can, particularly in unheated areas like out-houses or the loft. If you notice any cracks or distortions call out your local heating engineer. Worcester has also just launched a product called CondenseSure which can be used to prevent boiler condensate pipes freezing. Speak to your installer about the benefits of fitting one ready for the cold months ahead.

4. And finally, make sure your heating system is working to its best ability by checking all your radiators. If the top of your radiator feels cooler than the bottom, you may need to bleed it and remove any trapped air. Make sure you protect the surrounding area with a sheet, or similar, and release the air from the radiator, a small amount of water may be released so catch it in a cloth or some paper towels. When you next heat the radiator you should find it heats more quickly and evenly.

If you want more advice on heating your home check out our help videos and make sure your home is ready for winter.

Sue Pennington, Consumer Brand Manager

Energy Saving Week tips from Martyn Bridges

Last week saw the return of ‘The Big Energy Saving week’, which highlighted the changes we can make in our own homes to save us cash on our energy outgoings. All week, free practical advice and events were offered up and down the country to help more of us become a little more energy savvy. As a nation we have the capability to save £7.4 billion on energy bills if we turn off appliances not-in-use, power our homes more efficiently and insulate; according to a study conducted by the EST.

Small steps count and even minor changes can help make your home more energy efficient.

Martyn Bridges, director of marketing and technical support, at Worcester, Bosch Group has outlined a few simple steps to help you make quick savings on both your energy bills and carbon emissions:

 

• Turning your thermostat down by just 1°C, can help to reduce your heating bills by up to 10%.

• A boiler which is 15 years old or more may actually be wasting as much as 30 pence of every pound spent to heat your home or water. This could mean that as much as £235 may actually be escaping through the flue each year (Source: Energy Savings Trust).

• Boilers over 15 years old are also likely to have a standby pilot light, which could be costing in the region of £50-£60 per year just to keep running.

• Depending on the efficiency of your old boiler, a replacement condensing boiler could actually reduce your home’s carbon emissions by 15-30%.  In fact, if everyone in the UK had a condensing boiler, our annual carbon emissions would be reduced by 17.5 million tonnes, resulting in a saving of £1.3 billion on energy bills every year, according to the Centre for Alternative Technology.

• Updating your heating system to an ‘A-rated’ condensing boiler, such as Worcester’s Greenstar range of gas and oil-fired condensing boilers, could make your system up to 90% efficient – helping you to stay warm all winter long without accumulating a big bill from your energy provider.

So all in all even just by carrying out a few checks and making small changes you’ll be making a difference to your fuel costs. Making these changes puts you in a better position to mitigate the widely-publicised rise in energy costs.

WORCESTER, BOSCH GROUP IS HAVING A GOLDEN YEAR

WE’VE GOT 23 WHICH? BEST BUY ACCREDITATIONS!

If hitting the milestone of 50 years in business wasn’t reason enough to celebrate here at Worcester, we are delighted that we have, once again, successful in the latest Which? Report.

Our range of Greenstar gas-fired boilers, including the new CDi Classic range, were awarded 23 Which? Best Buy accreditations – quite an impressive total! We were also placed in the category of ‘The most reliable gas boiler brands’ – with no other manufacturer scoring higher than us. 

Our loyal customers have contributed to our success so we would like to take the time to say thank you.  We are delighted that we have received this response from customers and we value every piece of feedback. Due to this support we were also featured highest from customer scores in the boiler breakdown cover and servicing section of the latest Which? Report for the 5^th consecutive year.

This part of the survey required Which? panel members to take into consideration price, customer service, response repair time and value for money an overall satisfaction result and we’re delighted to be the only manufacturer to have reached such a high figure. We have had an amazing year so far celebrating our 50^th anniversary and this accolade is the icing on our birthday cake!

The reliability and efficiency of our products, servicing and customer satisfaction is something we are extremely proud of and invest heavily in every year. Customer insight is always invaluable to us and helps us to continue improving the high standard we already have.

To reinforce our confidence in our own product range, and give you that little bit extra, we have also extended our 5 year guarantee promotion on our Greenstar gas-fired CDi, Si and Ri ranges and all our oil-fired boiler Greenstar range until the end of December – perfect for those who find they need to replace their boiler ahead of the colder months.

The importance of cleansing (your heating system!)

Here at Worcester, it’s in our nature that we are always looking at new and exciting ways to help our customers.

As market leaders we take great pride in the products that we sell and customer service that we offer. Not only have we been one of the top 50 call centres in the UK for the past three years, every single one of our boilers in the Greenstar gas fired condensing range has been awarded a Which? Best Buy accreditation; something we’re very proud of.

However, we always want to do more so as part of an internal initiative, we wanted to try and reduce boiler failures through helping our homeowner customers understand how to look after their boiler and what to look out for.

Knowing that time is precious, and how many of us rely on our smart phones, it seemed only logical that we create a short video on this topic, which we have uploaded to our website and YouTube channel.

Our video shows you the importance of having your system cleansed – it’s not just another sale for an installer, it’s a really important part of the process. Whether it is as part of a new or replacement installation – system cleansing is vital to a healthy and happy boiler.

All our self-help videos whether they are on our website or YouTube have always received such positive feedback, we hope that this video is another invaluable piece of information from us at Worcester that will really help you at home.

Take a look at our new video here: http://www.worcester-bosch.co.uk/homeowner/customer-service/helpful-videos/listings/233-Home-heating-tips

Consumer brand manager,

Sue Pennington

50 miles for 50 years

As you may well know, this year at Worcester, Bosch Group we’re celebrating our 50^th anniversary. We have planned a host of exciting activities hoping to raise money for local charities as well as celebrate our coming of age in style.

Never let it be said that here at Worcester we won’t accept a tricky challenge, myself and Shaun Mansbridge are no exception. As part of the latest fundraising antics we are going to take on the gruelling challenge of completing the Malvern Ultra, on 5^th May aiming to raise £5,050 for St Richard’s Hospice.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the Malvern Ultra is a 53 mile endurance run and that Shaun and I have already started a rigorous training routine for, so over the next few weeks we thought we would share with you what we’re enduring in the process.

So, if you don’t fancy joining us in training we hope that you enjoy reading it.

In training:

Slowly we have begun to up the mileage each week and are now probably running between 50 to 55 miles per week.

With 5.00am starts during the week we get up before work and pound the lanes near home to get in as much mileage as possible.

Every Sunday morning we are getting together for a training session, and running parts of the route that we will cover, at the moment we’re doing anywhere in between 20 to 25 miles each time which is taking us approximately 4 hours.

The hardest training session so far was the other Sunday, when we met at Knightwick at 8am, ran onto the Worcestershire Way and then followed the route all the way up to the Beacon on top of the Malverns.

The weather wasn’t on our side that week and we set off in heavy rain, which seemingly got worse as we ran and it in fact turned into snow as we reached Malvern. When we got to the Beacon at the top, I have to say it was a blizzard – heavy wind and the snow was almost horizontal – we could hardly see where we were going. It was absolutely freezing and didn’t make the experience any easier!

As you can imagine, a few choice words were exchanged that Sunday and we both wondered what the we had got ourselves into – still can’t do too much for a good cause and (now it is officially Spring) fingers crossed we won’t have to contend with any more blizzards!

Money can be donated at: www.justgiving.com/50years50miles

Carl Arntzen, managing director

WALK THIS WAY WITH WORCESTER, BOSCH GROUP AND WYVERN FM

This year, we have joined forces with Wyvern Radio to launch the ‘Walk of Worcestershire’ event taking place on Sunday 1^st July 2012. We’re encouraging people from across the county to join in and help us raise money for local charity Acorns Children’s Hospice.

The event is a ten mile charity walk that will start at Three Counties Showground, Malvern and finish at Worcester Racecourse.  The route of the walk will take you on some of Worcestershire’s most picturesque routes and all of the money that you raise whilst doing it will benefit Acorns Children’s Hospice in Worcester.

If you’re a willing walker and think you’d like to get involved in the event, you can ‘enter to walk’ at www.wyvernfm.co.uk plus you’ll also find further information about the route you will take and how the money that you will raise will be used within the charity.

We are delighted to be sponsors of Wyvern Walk of Worcestershire and are going to work hard to rally up support in the county. We’re going to encourage as many people as possible to join in and have already started urging our employees and their families to get involved – it’s an easy and fun way to raise money for a very worthy cause.

We’re really looking forward to the event and also raising as much money as possible for Acorns.

Victoria Billings, marketing projects manager