Combi Boiler Hot Water Always On - Waste of Fuel? ECO Feature?

mrobsessed

Hi All,

I have a 3 year old Worcester Combi Boiler and have recently been thinking about how to reduce my energy costs. I've reduced the central heating temperature, but wondered about the hot water setting which I notice can separately be set with a timer or turned off altogether, suggesting that there is a benefit from doing this. I've never done this and it has always been permanently on, with the central heating separately controlled by a timer and/or thermostat.

Does leaving the hot water permanently 'on' use a lot of fuel or is it just a pilot light that uses negligible quantity of gas? My heater also has an 'eco' feature for the hot water function which is also meant to reduce fuel usage (at the expense of water taking longer to heat up) - how does this work?

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!
Mr O

A.Penny.Saved

My boiler has a hot water temperature maintenance feature but it never seemed to make any difference.

It seemed like a waste of energy to me because it never made any difference to the speed of hot water delivery so I disabled it.

macman

Why don't you switch it off and see how if affects the speed of hot water delivery? It's little more than a convenience device, it doesn't store a great deal of hot water.

mrobsessed

Thanks.

But what about just turning off the hot water when it is not being used - does this save any/much energy?

pledgeX

I have a Worcester Bosch boiler and the eco setting is turned on. It really doesn't take that long for the hot water to heat up so it's a no brainer in my opinion as having the water kept hot all the time is clearly going to use more energy.

If you want to know exactly how much it save, you'll have to take some meter readings and calculations.

daveyjp

Pre heating of water is for when the boiler is to be sited outside. This is not very common in the UK so turn boiler to ECO mode.

A.Penny.Saved

mrobsessed wrote: »

Thanks.

But what about just turning off the hot water when it is not being used - does this save any/much energy?

None at all unless someone uses the hot water. If you have someone who is using lots of hot water and you don't want them to be able to just turn on the hot water tap, turn it off will prevent them from using Gas.

If someone isn't using hot water excessively, I don't think it is worth considering.

Canucklehead

It's a combi boiler.

If you turn off the preheat it will not consume any gas.

It will not produce hot water or consume gas unless a hot tap is turned on.

It has no permanent pilot light.

The preheat is intended to give a quicker response to hot water demand.

The user instructions are quite helpfull with regard to the 'ECO' setting.

mrobsessed

Thanks for the advice - very helpful.