Take a trip down memory lane as Andy Gibbs looks at some of the products that you don’t often see in the wild in 2026:
Last week I was sent a picture of a gas unit heater from someone who didn’t know what it was, and was scared of it.
It was a Baxi Brazilia, a unit heater, about 2kw and once upon a time, they were all the rage. You can still buy them, amazingly, but they are no longer all the rage.
So here goes a trip down memory lane, for all the oldies out there to say “yeah I remember them ” and all the youngsters to say “you had a gas-fired what?!”
I still remember clearly the first, and last time I saw a gas fired fridge. I was still an apprentice so it was around 1992. The whole concept is just mad isn’t it, heat to cool things, but somehow a very small flame boiled up some crazy chemicals and it made things cooler.
Definitely certain you can’t buy them for your house any more, but you can for your campervan apparently.
Next up, gas tumble dryers. Oooh yes, let’s put naked flames under nice dry fabrics.
Again, I can only remember seeing half a dozen of these in the wild. I just don’t think people trusted them enough, although they are way more efficient than regular electric tumble dryers.
You can still buy them, but not for your house, just if you happen to own a huge dry cleaning company.
While we are on drying stuff, how about a gas drying cupboard. Super rare by the time I’d qualified, never saw one in the wild either.
Essentially imagine getting a burner from a gas hob, setting it up at the bottom of your airing cupboard, rolling a bit of chicken wire above it, then making a load of wooden, yes, wooden shelves above it. What could possibly go wrong?
So back to the gas unit heater. I really used to like them, compact, efficient and reliable. You could easily have one in each room of your house and keep warm, so long as you don’t mind running a gas pipe to each room of your house.
Heating water on demand came from either a flueless sink water heater, one above each sink, with all the products of combustion just entering the room.
Or from a multipoint water heater.
By the time I qualified these were all room sealed appliances , but they didn’t used to be. Originally they were open flued and in the bathroom.
Old boys back then called them an Ascot, ‘cos that was the manufacturer’s name.
I only saw one once. I didn’t even look at it. Just cut it off and capped it.
Boilers have always been boilers, but 40 years ago, there were a load more manufacturers, and obviously, a load more crazy ideas.
The Servowarm MasterRad was a very thin boiler, hidden behind a radiator. You had to swing the radiator out and prop the end up on some bricks so you could get at the boiler.
The New World CH502 was just madness personified. I just remember it being impossible to work on, nothing was accessible at all.
I can’t remember a make, but I do know boilers operated by clockwork existed as well. So you had to keep the clock wound up, and it would open and close the gas supply as it went around.
Unless the clock stopped. Which was OK, if it wasn’t alight at the time. But if it was alight at the time, it just kept on burning!
I think safety has, rightly so, seen off a lot of these slightly more mad appliances, and that’s a good thing isn’t it?
Hopefully none of you will ever stumble across any of this stuff out there any more, but it’s fun to look back.
Contributors
Andy Gibbs (author)
Andy Gibbs is a heating and plumbing engineer with over 30 years of experience on the tools. After starting his career working for British Gas, he started his own business in 2004. Andy is a regular columnist for Installer sharing his real-world view of what life is like for engineers.
