gas boiler condemned, got to use immersion! cheapest way to use it?

cheel

Hello everyone,

My gas boiler has just been condemned by the housing association, ill be waiting for a repair as it needs parts.

I dont need heating as its summer so they dont count it as urgent.

So for hot water I will have to use the immersion .

Does anyone know the most economical way to use it? I'm desperately trying to get out of my over draft ao I can sea the pre payment for direct debit so its important I dont mess this up!

Might get a camping solar shower tomorrow. Anyone tried one?

Thanks you ever helpful lot!
Cheel xx

cheel

I think what I'm going to do is turn everything except the freezers off when I go up to school. See how much is on the meter, then switch the immersion on. I'll be hone roughly an hour so I can see the cost of an hour switched on and how hot the water is at that point!!

My son might be having a very early bath tonight!!

jk0

You can work it out easily enough without switching everything off.

Most immersions are 3kw, so will use 3 units per hour. From cold you'll need about two hours to get enough for a bath.

Multiply 6 units by the price of your electricity per unit, and there's your answer.

HappyMJ

cheel wrote: »

Hello everyone,

My gas boiler has just been condemned by the housing association, ill be waiting for a repair as it needs parts.

I dont need heating as its summer so they dont count it as urgent.

So for hot water I will have to use the immersion .

Does anyone know the most economical way to use it? I'm desperately trying to get out of my over draft ao I can sea the pre payment for direct debit so its important I dont mess this up!

Might get a camping solar shower tomorrow. Anyone tried one?

Thanks you ever helpful lot!
Cheel xx

Leave it on 24 hours a day.

It will heat the cylinder until it's hot then stop.

It will only come on again to heat the water when the water temperature drops which should only be when you draw water off.

You could spend £50 or so installing a timer and time it to come on for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening but for this short period of time that will just save literally just a few pennies per day....so just leave it on 24 hours a day.

What I would do is open the immersion element up and turn the temperature down to 60 degrees (the minimum to ensure that any Legionnaire's will be killed) which will save a little. The thermostat installed for the boiler does not control the thermostat for the immersion element. You won't get two baths of water out of the cylinder as you would have done if it was set to 75 degrees but you'll get enough water for one bath then you have to wait another hour for the cylinder to reheat.

It's not that much more expensive than gas.

Gas is quite inefficient. The boiler needs to heat water in your kitchen/utility room which is pumped to the cylinder then heat transfers to the hot water in the cylinder and it's cycled back again. There's a lot of waste. Waste in buring gas, waste in transmitting the heat to the boiler etc... An electric immersion element is 100% efficient. All the energy used is transferred to the water to heat the water.

Slinky

Thanks for the reminder about why the water is set at 60 degrees. I'd forgotten about Legionnaires and turned ours down a couple of weeks ago as the airing cupboard seemed really hot. Have just turned it back up again.

Primrose

do you really need to heat enough hot water for daily baths. When I was a kid we only had a bath once a week when the coke boiler was heated and had a twice daily strip wash using hot water from a kettle.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Aye, when I was a lad, we had to queue up for the tin bath, and only on the fifth Sunday!

cheel

Hi everyone,

Its working ok. Turns out the immersion thing isn't as expensive as I thought it was. I'm not paying out anymore money over all (key meters) and the water is glancing hot!! To hot to stand even with rubber gloves so a switch on for an hour twice a day is plenty to keep us in hot water xx