Spending £17/week on electricity, can someone help me with my boiler/immersion heater

bob_regis

I hope someone can help.

Me and my wife live in a tiny 3 bedroom house which has two bathrooms.

We have the following:

1. A gas fired condensing boiler (Greenstar Ri)
2. An immersion heater (we think) as around our water tank there seems to be a coil which has a thermostat setting.

Our gas usage seems to be around £0.48/week and electricity £17.07/week.

I initially thought that this high electricity rate was due to us having the immersion heater cylinder thermostat too high but it is now on 55C (from 85). There seems to be no way to put a timer on this or even turn it on and off near the boiler or anywhere in the kitchen.

Our heating and central heating timer programme is set to a couple of hours in the morning and four hours in the evening.

I am not sure how to bring down my electricity costs - which I assume to be the immersion heater keeping all the hot water on. The rest of the house is as energy saving as I can possibly think of.

Will turning the boiler on to heat the water more continuously (as opposed to a few hours) so that the immersion heater does not kick in be the best way or should I just ask a plumber to come and give us a hand?

We would appreciate anyones idea?

Cardew

The Immersion heater should never be on if you have gas CH.

You are calculating something wrong if you believe you can have heating on for 6 hours per day and it only cost £0.48 a week.

Would that be 48 gas units?

penrhyn

I would suggest you register with a site like imeasure and use it to record your weekly meter readings. This will give you a more accurate idea of what your energy is costing you.
Saves trying to do all the sums yourself.

http://www.imeasure.org.uk/

As above you should never need to use an immersion heater if you have gas central heating.
Are you sure that the thermostat on the hot water tank is not associated with the gas CH.
Immersion heaters mostly just have a switch.

macman

There must be a switch to turn the immersion on and off somewhere, it won't be near the boiler, it will probably be in or near the cupboard (?) where the immersion is. Trace the cable back from the tank.
Hardly surprising that your leccy bill is so high if you have it on 24/7 and was set to 85! Your hot water must have been scaldingly hot.
Get a timer put on it for use during the times when you are not running your CH.
I can't quite get my head round your idea that the way to reduce your leccy bill is to run your gas boiler on continuous?
Turn the immersion off and use the CH for what it was designed for-to heat the rads and the hot water.

bob_regis

Cardew - you are right. I did make a mistake with my gas usage, it is actually £3.42/week (857KwH/quarter).

Thanks to penrhyn for the suggestion of the website; I had just downloaded KwH for my iphone so will see how I get along with this.

macman: I thought if I ran my gas boiler continuously then I wouldn't have to worry about the immersion heater kicking in.

My tank is in the airing cupboard and there are cables going back from it but I can not find any switches. The cylinder thermostat goes into what looks like a junction box, along with two cables connecting to the wilo pump (? circulating pump).

There is a cable however which comes from the very top of the tank which disappears into the wall and seems to travel (upwards) into the loft. There definatly is no switch though adjacent to the tank.

I may have to admit defeat and call a plumber - it will probably save me money in the long run and get my boiler serviced while I am it.

macman

No, because the hot water temp is controlled by the thermostat on the tank calling for hot water when it cools.. If the immersion is already on and has heated it, then the thermostat will never activate the motor valve to send hot water to the tank from the boiler DHW circuit.
Have a look on your consumer unit to see if there is a dedicated immersion circuit that can be turned off there. The cable that runs from the top is the one you are interested in, that comes from the heating element. If not then you should get this sorted as a priority-you need an electrician to do this, not a central heating engineer.
PS: to service your boiler you need a Gas Safe registered CH engineer-not a plumber!

bob_regis

Thanks macman, I looked in my consumer unit and I do have a switch called "imm htr" which I have just happily set to off.

Hopefully that has put a stop to that then and I don't need to worry about the immersion heater from now on.

A gas safe registered CH engineer is who I will call. Many thanks.

sequence

You say that you have adjusted the temperature on the
immersion heater ? Did you adjust the thermometer that is
attached to the water cyclinder ? If so this is the wrong
thermometer to adjust and will have no effect on the
immersion heater. Immersion heaters often have their
thermometer hidden under a cover where the element is (ours
is under the black cover that covers the wires to the immersion
heater).

Immersion heaters are supposed to be a last resort for when
you boiler has broken down, so it should never be on. They are
a poor choice for heating water.

There should be a switch somewhere (usually where you'll
least expect it) to turn the IH off.

sequence

I just noticed the link to the thermostat in you OP - yes this is the wrong thermostat and only controls the GCH and not the immersion.