High Electricity Use - water heater to blame?

Miss_Jwales

Hi everyone just need a bit of help!

we recently moved into a brand new 1 bedroom flat with electric heating. We use dimplex heaters (1 hour morning and evening x 2 heaters) and have a water tank to provide hot water. We leave the tank on all the time as it has a thermostat on it and switches off automatically when it reaches the set temperature. We shower in the morning and wash dishes in the evening. Last month our bill said that we'd used over 800kws of electricity and that seems pretty high to me. we're careful with lights, dont have a dishwasher and do a max of 2 loads of washing a week. The meter reading was right so I'm wondering whether the water heater has anythign to do with the huge usage, surely the thermostat would stop it running up a massive bill? Advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Premier_2

Anything electrical that heats things up uses lots of leccy.

Concentrate on those things rather than the lights. You could have 30 x 100W lights on in the house (or 150 equivalent energy saving ones) and it would only use the same amount of electricity that the immersion heater uses heating the water.

Do you keep the water in your kettle hot 24/7 ?

Use your hot water heater like you use your kettle. Heat it up just before you need it (taking advantage of E7 rates if you have it)

McKneff

yes, i think youre right, there is alwasy an an argument about whether to leave on one or not. personally if i had a large family it would probably be a good idea but not if there are only two of you. Yes the thermostat would stop it but as the water is cooling all day the thermostat is going on and off all day. Test if out for a couple of months and im sure you'll find a big difference. Do you have showers or baths. If you only use the bath just turn it on to heat the amount of water you need.

Miss_Jwales

Thanks for the responses, I've been umming and aahing over whether to turn it on and off for a while. we both have showers, very very rarely run a bath. Its got 2 switches (i guess one is for a boost) I usually leave one (definately not the boost one!) on but i'll try turnign them both off and see if it makes a difference. I called E-on and they seem to think its odd that its so high (especially as we werent there for 4 days last week adn had the water turned off) so they're sending an engineer out. Maybe its the meter?

Premier_2

Miss_Jwales wrote: »

Thanks for the responses, I've been umming and aahing over whether to turn it on and off for a while. we both have showers, very very rarely run a bath. Its got 2 switches (i guess one is for a boost) I usually leave one (definately not the boost one!) on but i'll try turnign them both off and see if it makes a difference. ...

The non-boost one will heat the whole tank of water (and so use a lot of electricity).

The boost one will only heat part of the tank (about the top 1/3), more than enough to wash dishes etc.

Cardew

IMO 800kWh for an all electric flat in one of the coldest months for years is not high.

A brand new flat will have a very well insulated Hot water tank and I doubt if it will 'lose' 2kWh a day even if it was left on 24/7.

Even then the heat 'lost' will warm up the fabric of your house at the same cost as your heaters.

I am not saying that you shouldn't have it on a timer as you obviously should - particularly in summer when you are not heating your flat - but it is not the big culprit. In fact you don't have a problem IMO.