Best way to heat water? (Gas boiler with water cyclinder)

kingcreech

Hi all

I bought a house 4mths ago and finally moved in around 3wks ago.

Now we have settled (well nearly settled) I want to try and figure out the most econmical way of heating the hot water for the house.

My house is a 4 bed and is around 8yrs old. The boiler is a glow worm and sited in the garage, we have about 3 water tanks in the loft and hot water cyclinder on the landing.

The boiler has no settings other than one dial which has a min and max setting, I think this is set on 3/4s, we have a themostat in the garage to help stop freezing, currently set this on 4 degrees.

The hot water cyclinder has a thermostat (I think), I'm going to check this out tonight as I think it is set to high as I have read water shouldn't really burn when washing hands and ours is borderline burning.

Most radiators have thermostats which are on if needed, off in the spare rooms but we have 3 radiatos with no valves. One in the hallway, I was told we needed at least one with no thermostat (not sure why) and the other two with no thermostats are in the cloakroom and ensuite. The ensuite rad is a towel rail style and seems to be on permanently, does this seem right? It has 2 valves at the bottom corners, 1 seems to turn and do nothing and the other doesn't turn at all.

My ma in law said it was better to leave the hot water turned on from morning till night as its cheaper to keep the tank warm than it is to let the tank go cold and then reheat, is this correct?

I'd of thought it would need to be run similar to the heating, on at certain times and off when not needed.

We have the central heating set to come on in the morning for an hour and then come back on from 5 till 10 at night. I think the wall thermostat in the hallway is set at around 21degrees.

I've tried to give as much info as possible so you can understand where I am now and how I can tweak to be as economical as possible.

Sorry if this has been asked 100000's of times but I did a search and I couldn't find anything to help.

Thanks for any helps

kingcreech

Have I posted this in the right part of the forum?

Farway

My ma in law said it was better to leave the hot water turned on from morning till night as its cheaper to keep the tank warm than it is to let the tank go cold and then reheat, is this correct?

I'd of thought it would need to be run similar to the heating, on at certain times and off when not needed.

She is wrong, you are right. This is based on assumption hot tank is lagged / insulated and not just bare metal, as only 8 years old I guess it is insulated

There are a squillion threads on this forum about this, but the urban myth of leaving it on is strong one

I was told we needed at least one with no thermostat (not sure why)

True, this allows water flow even if all thermostatic valves on other rads shut down, something to do with pump damage I think

how I can tweak to be as economical as possible.

For a start, turn the hall thermostat down to 20 and see how you feel, if still comfortable, turn it down to 19 and so on until it is too cold

katsu

Agree with Faraway, run hot water like heating and turn the central heating down. About 19 should do you - we have ours at 18 and it is a bit chilly. I'd also reduce the hour in the morning - try 30 mins, starting off say 15 mins before you get up. I also stop ours a while before we go to bed, so if you go to bed at 10.30 I'd turn it off at 9.30.

Re water tank thermostat - the man who services our boiler turned ours down - I think to 60-65 degrees C.

Also, get your boiler serviced annually by a Corgi registered person. Ours now runs more efficiently and we save money through having fixed it's faults!

kingcreech

Thanks for replying, I new there would be posts on this but my searching wasn't the best . . . was trying to search here and google on my dinner and properly didn't get the wording right.

I'll try the heating on 19 tonight and see how it goes.

Should the towel rail style of radiator be permenantly hot or should it only be hot when the heating is on? I'm sure it is always hot no matter the time.

Yea I think I'll get the boiler checked out asap, it may have been a while since it's last check over.

Thanks again

Premier_2

The hot water cylinder thermostat should be set about 60 degrees. If that means the hot water at the tap is then too cold, turn it up a bit.

With your set up, we heat our hot water for about an hour early morning in preparation for morning ablutions.

Usually that does us for the whole day, with enough hot water still available at evening time for washing hands, dishes, etc. If we do find we need some more due to excessive demand during the day, or we decide we want a bath (showering is our norm) we pop it on for another hour just before we need it.

Cardew

Your Ma in law is wrong, plain wrong and there are countless threads on this subject. That said a well lagged tank does not lose a huge amount of heat, and that heat is not wasted at this time of the year as it heats the house.

The dial on your boiler just sets the temperature of the water in the CH. Having it hotter does not affect efficiency materially and hot radiators will heat up the house quicker. However on Max it can be over 80C and you need to be careful with very young children that they don't touch the radiators.

The stat on the Hot Water tank determines the temperature of the HW for taps etc. I believe 65C is recommended to ensure there are no problems with Legionnaires disease although some people have it lower and turn it up every couple of weeks.

It is now recommended(mandatory?) that one radiator should have no TRV(Thermostatically Controlled Valve) in the room where the wall thermostat is sited.

I have heard of towel rails being connected to the Hot Water system so in Summer when the CH is off you can dry towels. Of course some Towel rails are electrically heated????

It is just a matter of trial and error to find a setting for the wall thermostat that is acceptable.

cajef

katsu wrote: »

Also, get your boiler serviced annually by a Corgi registered person.

All good advice except there is no such thing as a Corgi registered person now, it is Gas Safe registration.

http://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/

kingcreech

Thanks alot for the help and advice people.

I have set the min max dial on the boiler to half way, will try for a week and see how the Central heating is.

I have checked the hot water tank and the thermostat dial on that is set between 45 - 50. Is this too low? The water temp for the shower and hot water taps is nice and hot, alittle hot at times.

I'm going to book the boiler in for a service when I next get payed, I'll also ask the guy to have a look over a few radiators which seem to leak either in the night or when the heating is coming back, I get a small puddle of water under where the push fitting goes into the thermo's.

I've not got the heating set at 20.5 which seems to be just about right when having all doors shut in the house, any less and it gets chilly. Will turning up the boiler dial from halfway to two thirds help here or is that not going to do anything other than waste cashola.

Again cheers for the help, hard work this house lark . . . thought it was gonna be all about chilling on the ps3 . . . how wrong was I