Water on constant
Geordie77
Posts: 1 Newbie
Afternoon
I have a traditional boiler with a tank in loft, one in a bed room and boiler in the kitchen. I'm changing from an electric shower as want a more powerful shower. Changing to a pump and mixer shower but at times five of us showering on a morning. I have the water coming on each morning with heating but wondered if uses much gas to leave on constant. Rarely anyone if house during the day on weekdays.
I have a traditional boiler with a tank in loft, one in a bed room and boiler in the kitchen. I'm changing from an electric shower as want a more powerful shower. Changing to a pump and mixer shower but at times five of us showering on a morning. I have the water coming on each morning with heating but wondered if uses much gas to leave on constant. Rarely anyone if house during the day on weekdays.
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Comments
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I'd just have it on before you need hot water and then off during the day when you aren't there.
Most tanks are pretty well insulated and will stay reasonably hot all day, get another jacket if yours is a bit thin or mankey. The problem with leaving it ona all day with gas heating, is that the boiler fires up periodically, the pump runs and hot water then circulates around the pipework until the tank is satisfied. This means that you waste heat as the boiler fires and runs as it's not running at optimum efficiency for shortish firing cycles and the hot pipework is dissipating all that heat whilst the boiler is running.
There's no benefit it keeping the tank at full temperature all day and all night when you don't need it.
IMO you are better off heating the tank once and then retaining as much heat in it as possible until it runs out and then doing it again. We get away with an hour and a half a day just before we get up and that gives us our showers and all the hot water we need until the next day. Try optimising your heating time, so you've got enough for what you need when you need it.
Dont forget that everytime you run a hot tap, you are probably wasting a gallon or so of cold water that goes down the sink and then a gallon of hot water sits in the piework getting cold. You might also find that a pumped power shower will use vast quantities of water, both hot & cold.
A shower delivering 10 litres a minute will get through 50 litres in 5 minutes, some pumped showers can double that and if you all spend 10 mins a go in the shower - well you do the sums, you could easily run out of water unless you've got a big tank or limit the time you stand there. You could end up significantly increasing your water bill as well if you are on a meter.
We get a more than adequate flow at 7lpm (using a flow limiter) and spend about 3 minutes each = around 40ltres for the two of us.Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers0 -
Afternoon
I have a traditional boiler with a tank in loft, one in a bed room and boiler in the kitchen. I'm changing from an electric shower as want a more powerful shower. Changing to a pump and mixer shower but at times five of us showering on a morning. I have the water coming on each morning with heating but wondered if uses much gas to leave on constant. Rarely anyone if house during the day on weekdays.
The quick answer is if the hot water tank has a properly set up thermostat which controls the boiler for heating water then leaving it on all day is not going to use much gas. Once the tank is hot the thermostat should stop the boiler from running again until some hot water is used or it has cooled down significantly. That said, it is not very efficient as you will use some gas to just keep the water hot, plus the boiler first has to heat the circulating water before the hot water tank is heated and that will waste some heat. A timer which shuts the hot water heating down while you are out of the house, or not using much hot water, will reduce gas consumption.
Something you might want to think about is if you have five people having power showers in quick succession the capacity of the hot water tank may not be enough and a traditional boiler may not be able to keep up - person number 5 might be having a cold shower. You might need to think about changing to a combi boiler if you need a large quantity of hot water over a relatively short period. Or keep an electric shower and just get the pressure boosted."In the future, everyone will be rich for 15 minutes"0 -
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In simple laymen's terms ...
You need a cup of tea/coffee when you wake up in the morning/get home in the evening. Do you leave the kettle boiling overnight/all day so that it's ready for your morning brew, or just put it on when you need it?
(disregarding the fact that it would boil dry and fill the room with steam)0 -
You could fit your kettle with a thermostat so it didn't actually boil constantly, just switched on each time the temp dropped down from boiling point......I
(disregarding the fact that it would boil dry and fill the room with steam)
then you'd save ... ooooh... 38 seconds each morning before you got your cuppa!0
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