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Considerably less than I used to .Use woodburner burning old pallet material and logs I find about the place .Fire on every night and all weekend .Heating on for one hour in mornings before kids go to school and comes on for short while in evening before fire is stoked up .Checked usage on EON site and gas down 23% ,but eleccy up 5% !!
Should show big reduction in couple of months when I have few more months of woodburner usage to show .
Nothing better than being warm as toast ,glowing in the knowledge its free !!!!
My immersion heater is switched off and is only ever turned on should my boiler pack up. My understanding was you should only ever turn it on when needed. With it switched on I am not quite sure that it is doing anything because my megaflow contains hot water.
The immersion heater is there to give you hot water when the normal processes fail.
Well thats my understanding but curious to know whether it helps having it switched on
cheers
Quote:
Originally Posted by steve ex vauxhall
Immersion Heater, bloke who installed it all for me said " never turn your immersion off it's the best way to run them"
So it's been on for 3 years, was initially dubious myself, thought it would cost a fortune, but we have a pre-payment meter for the electric, and have never put more than £20 a week in it
My immersion heater is switched off and is only ever turned on should my boiler pack up. My understanding was you should only ever turn it on when needed. With it switched on I am not quite sure that it is doing anything because my megaflow contains hot water.
The immersion heater is there to give you hot water when the normal processes fail.
Well thats my understanding but curious to know whether it helps having it switched on
cheers
Not got the faintest idea mate, i'm not a heating engineer, this was what i was advised to do by the guy who installed it all 3 years ago,
never had a problem, always got hot water, summer or winter.
the only time we have turned it off is when we go away on holiday.
The one and only problem we have had, was about 6 months ago, the thermostat for the immersion packed in, replaced that and fine again
Not got the faintest idea mate, i'm not a heating engineer, this was what i was advised to do by the guy who installed it all 3 years ago,
never had a problem, always got hot water, summer or winter.
the only time we have turned it off is when we go away on holiday.
The one and only problem we have had, was about 6 months ago, the thermostat for the immersion packed in, replaced that and fine again
I would have thought that the tank water *never* gets cold - ok you use a bit of hot water out of the tank, it refills, so immersion only needs to run for a few mins to re-heat what you took out, your never letting the tank go cold every day and having to reheat a whole tankful of water.
Presumably the immersion has a thermostat on it, so it switches in & out when req. (otherwise tank would boil (bad thing!))
Im glad I started this thread now as tbh I'm a bit uneducated when it comes to the setup of our hot water system. We have a boiler in the kitchen cupboard, a tank in the airing cupboard upstairs which I assume is an immersion heater (it has a thermostat on the outside which I leave at 55c) and where the timer controls for HW and CH are.
I assumed that when the hot water is set to ON that the boiler heats up cold water, sends it to the tank and the tank keeps it at the set temp. Does that sound about right? Prob is as the day goes on the water gets less and less warm ie if you decide to run some in kitchen to wash some dishes up. That to me says the immersion is not on permanently otherwise the water would be constant temp throughout the day.
In hindsight next time BG engineer is around for annual service I should ask him for a bit of a walk through on what does what.
Im glad I started this thread now as tbh I'm a bit uneducated when it comes to the setup of our hot water system. We have a boiler in the kitchen cupboard, a tank in the airing cupboard upstairs which I assume is an immersion heater (it has a thermostat on the outside which I leave at 55c) and where the timer controls for HW and CH are.
I assumed that when the hot water is set to ON that the boiler heats up cold water, sends it to the tank and the tank keeps it at the set temp. Does that sound about right? Prob is as the day goes on the water gets less and less warm ie if you decide to run some in kitchen to wash some dishes up. That to me says the immersion is not on permanently otherwise the water would be constant temp throughout the day.
In hindsight next time BG engineer is around for annual service I should ask him for a bit of a walk through on what does what.
Hmmm - I would say that you *don't* have an immersion heater - they don't tend to get fitted these days.
I guess you have a standard Y plan heating system of Heating - Hot Water or Both.
You are right that the when the boiler is on Hot Water the boiler heats the water that flows through the heating coil in the bottom of the tank to heat the water until the thermostat clamped against the side of the tank cuts off, when the boiler goes off the tank will gradually cool (should take a long time tho if its well insulated) until the hot water comes back on again to re-heat.
Having a Immersion either allows you to re-heat quicky if you've used all the hot water, or you dont have a boiler heated tank, its immersion only, which sounds like what Steve has earlier up the post.
The scare stories about immersions are if you are always heating up tank fulls of stone cold water at a great cost in electricity (its just a big kettle element), rather than most people on Y plan heat both the water AND house together, so its much more efficient, or the immersion can boil the tank if the stat goes.... a bad thing
