Immersion heater and oil heating?

falko89

I remember at home when my parents got oil heating installed the immersion heater no longer worked.

In our house we have oil heating, its a new house and has had oil heating from it was built, but it also has an immersion heater and again it does not work. I've had it on for an hour there and nothing, the hot water is luke warm at best which came from the last time the oil heating was on.

Do immersion heaters not work with oil heating? Our oil is almost done and can't afford any more so we were thinking about lighting our fire and using the immersion for hot water.

conger

Normally the immersion heater will still be wired in. If this is the case then you should still be able to use it. If is is still wired in and not working then the next things to check would be fuses, RCBs or the actual immersion element.

muckybutt

I would imagine both instances are just coincidence.

Immersion heaters would not be linked to the oil system in any way as they are meant to be a secondary source of heating your water, if you are competent then you need to check the element - stat and electrical supply with a tester that way you can see if its an electrical problem, if you aren't competent then seek a qualified electrician to do the diagnostics.

reeac

muckybutt wrote: »

I would imagine both instances are just coincidence.

Immersion heaters would not be linked to the oil system in any way as they are meant to be a secondary source of heating your water, if you are competent then you need to check the element - stat and electrical supply with a tester that way you can see if its an electrical problem, if you aren't competent then seek a qualified electrician to do the diagnostics.

I agree, just coincidence. This thread has reminded me that recently we were at our son's house and although his boiler had a problem and wouldn't run, his underfloor heating was mildly warm and I concluded that the immersion heater was responsible. The immersion heater will heat the whole tank of water and with an unvented system such as he [and we] have that same water is pumped around the radiators and ufh. Given that the ufh is designed to work with water at maybe 35C then the 3kW immersion heater could give a modest warming effect. Certainly it was noticeable.

Gives a handy back up in case of boiler failure. I know that 3kW doesn't sound much but if run non-stop it would make a fair contribution.

G_M

There is no reason an emersion heater cannot work alongside oil.

You have a cylinder (airing cupboard?) full of water. This can be heated up either
a) by how water pumped around inside it (and heated by a bloile whether gas or oil fuelled) or
b) by an emmersion heated, which is basically just an element like in your kettle but bigger) inserted in the top of the cylinder.

If the emmersion does not work, either
a) the power to it is off - check main fuse boc/consumer unit
b) the power is off - check any switch leading to it
c) the wiring is faulty, loose
d) the element has failed

See here or

see here

or google "how to fix emmerion heater'

A._Badger

It's immersion heater, if you were thinking of googling it - not 'emmersion' heater.

But, yes, the consensus view is right. There is no link between one and t'other. Immersion heaters (especially these days) tend to be cheaply made and fail quite quickly so it's probably just coincidence. The good news is that a replacement isn't very expensive.

Mister_G

You may be lucky and find that it's just the thermostat that has failed or cut out. There's a small recessed reset button on most thermostats. It's often worth checking this first.

If it has failed, then replacing it is far easier (and cheaper) than having to replace the whole immersion heater.

Hope this helps.

wrightk

stupid question but go on top of the hot water cylinder and check it hasnt tripped. theres a tiny little button on top of the actual immersion heater which trips occasionally you just have to reset it. ours is always tripping especially when i forget to turn it off when im running the solid fuel system

cheers

edit; mister g beat me to it