Domestic Hot Water Heating

[ekimj10]

Anyone have an idea of the relative costs to heat our hot water system with tank storage, standard 3 bed bungalow with gas central heating.
Now that the central heating system is not used continually, my problem is whether to use the boiler for hot water only or use the immersion heater.
Either way could be on a timed cycle of say 2 hours twice a day.
I suspect that the electric immersion heater costs work out cheaper than running the boiler, but really don't know.
Anyone know or what do you do in a similar situation? Not looking for any detailed costing just a practical view.

Thanks Mike.

 

[craig3.2]

Always cheaper to use the gas boiler to hear your water,electric water heater(as with electric heating),is more expensive

 

[mmm-five]

We stripped out our immersion heater and storage tank when we installed a combi condensing boiler (it's a 5 year old Worcester Bosch Greenstar 30CDi).

We get high pressure from all taps, almost instant hot water, and fully programmable heating.

 

[TitanTim]

As said try not to use the immersion heater purely to heat the hot water as basically all it is is a giant kettle and quite an expensive way to do it. My smart meter goes berserk if the immersion heater is switched on, whereas it hardly registers when the boiler is doing it. I'm guessing the cost will depend on what you already have, if just replacing an existing tank with all the plumbing/pump/actuator valve etc already in situ then I wouldn't thought the cost would be too great. A tank from Wicks is around 160 quid so its just the labour to swap out. While your at it may as well swap the pump out if its getting old.

A few years ago we had the water mains pipe burst under the floor behind the central heating hot water tank, we live in a 2 bed bungalow and mains water pipe comes up into the middle of the house. The existing tank/plumbing/pipework all had to come out along with airing cupboard floor to get at the burst pipe and to make good. Took the plumber 15 solid hours to do all the work, new mains water pipe, new floor and platform for the hot water tank, installing a new hot water tank, new plumbing etc and recomissioning the heating, the guy was an absolute star as the previous 3 plumbers we had to come and look at the job wouldn't touch it. Total cost was £1800 which at the time I didn't think too bad. He started the job at 11am on a Saturday and left at 2am the Sunday Morning.

Tim.

 

[ekimj10]

mmm-five wrote :

We stripped out our immersion heater and storage tank when we installed a combi condensing boiler (it's a 5 year old Worcester Bosch Greenstar 30CDi).

Our boiler is now close to 7 years old and is also a Bosch Greenstar and is maybe coming to the end of it's life. The storage tank and immersion are over 30 years old, we live in a very high hard water area, so changing to a combi boiler would seem to make a lot of sense and solve the question I'm asking.
Not sure my wife could live without an airing cupboard though!
Thanks for responses.

 

[TitanTim]

mmm-five wrote :

We stripped out our immersion heater and storage tank when we installed a combi condensing boiler (it's a 5 year old Worcester Bosch Greenstar 30CDi).

Our boiler is now close to 7 years old and is also a Bosch Greenstar and is maybe coming to the end of it's life. The storage tank and immersion are over 30 years old, we live in a very high hard water area, so changing to a combi boiler would seem to make a lot of sense and solve the question I'm asking.
Not sure my wife could live without an airing cupboard though!
Thanks for responses.

I wouldn't say 7 years old for a boiler is old to be honest. I was thinking of changing mine (non combi) as its 15 years old and was chatting to my British Gas chappie who came last month to do the annual service. He said if it aint broke then don't fix it, whilst he said modern boilers especially combi are slightly more efficient they are more complicated and less reliable, in other words they don't make boilers like they used too. He said if I replaced mine all I would have is a shiny boiler that will be slightly more economical but thats it. It won't be any better and will have spend 2K. He said I would only replace it once it fails and the parts can't be found. I was quite surprised with the advice so will just be keeping my existing one going for as long as I can and have it serviced yearly along with the flue for safety.

Tim.

 

[WLH]

I have 23 year old Weil-McLain boiler that heats my house and makes my domestic hot water. I've had 2 service calls over the past 23 years and the cost of those calls were covered under my service contract. When parts are no longer being made and or it breaks I will replace it but not before.

 

[PerryGunn]

mmm-five wrote :

We stripped out our immersion heater and storage tank when we installed a combi condensing boiler (it's a 5 year old Worcester Bosch Greenstar 30CDi).

Our boiler is now close to 7 years old and is also a Bosch Greenstar and is maybe coming to the end of it's life. The storage tank and immersion are over 30 years old, we live in a very high hard water area, so changing to a combi boiler would seem to make a lot of sense and solve the question I'm asking.
Not sure my wife could live without an airing cupboard though!
Thanks for responses.

When we replaced our boiler, we moved it to the attic and added a megaflow pressurised hot water cylinder - all the heating & hot water pipes run down from the attic through the airing cupboard so it's still nice and warm in there and, as a plus point, moving the hot water cylinder into the attic meant that there's now a lot more space in the airing cupboard. Having the hot water cylinder close to the boiler means that the cylinder recovery time is very short

 

[uuf361]

Gas every time I'd think - even running the immersion on economy 7 overnight probably wouldn't be better.

Mine used to come on for only 40 mins a day though - 30 mins in the morning and 10 in the evening and plenty of hot water.....

Now I'm on air source heat pump