Can I bypass my hot water tank and just use the boiler?

NobbyJ7

Hi there,

I am completely new to this as I have only recently moved into a newly built house. We were told by the developer to keep the heating and hot water on for 6-9 months to reduce shrinkage as the house dries out, this is fine and I have accepted this was required through winter.

However, I am now changing my heating and hot water to programme settings as both my partner and I are out at work from 7 in the morning until 6 at night so the heating and hot water being on in the day is wasted.

This will be a stupid question but does the hot water tank that the immersion heater sits in need to be used or can this be bypassed and use the boiler only for direct hot water coming into the house. My boiler is in my garage and the hot water tank is in the upstairs bathroom.

How can I make my energy bills as cheap as possible in this scenario?

Any advice/experience is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Rob

System

NobbyJ7 wrote: »

Hi there,

I am completely new to this as I have only recently moved into a newly built house. We were told by the developer to keep the heating and hot water on for 6-9 months to reduce shrinkage as the house dries out, this is fine and I have accepted this was required through winter.

However, I am now changing my heating and hot water to programme settings as both my partner and I are out at work from 7 in the morning until 6 at night so the heating and hot water being on in the day is wasted.

This will be a stupid question but does the hot water tank that the immersion heater sits in need to be used or can this be bypassed and use the boiler only for direct hot water coming into the house. My boiler is in my garage and the hot water tank is in the upstairs bathroom.

How can I make my energy bills as cheap as possible in this scenario?

Any advice/experience is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Rob

With a storage tank it is unlikely that you will have a combination boiler. The whole purpose of an insulated storage tank is to store hot water. It doesn't follow that it is being heated 24/7 just because the timer is ON.

For example, I have a 250L HW storage tank which is timed to come ON for about 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night. The water is heated up to 62C. Left overnight, the tank temperature falls by about 1 to 3C. I estimate that I am using about 1C3M of gas (11.2kWhs) per dayto heat my hot water and for the hob. This equates to about 30p a day.

Looking to the practical. The hot water used to heat your home and to provide domestic hot water is in a closed circuit. For domestic hot water, the tank is heated by an internal pipe coil which is controlled by thermostats to make safe the hot water that comes out of the tap. That is, it doesn't scold you. If you want to bypass this system you would have to find an alternative way of transferring heat from the boiler circuit to your hot water pipe. This is what a combination boiler is designed to do.

Now it is possible that someone with plumbing skills could connect your boiler outflow directly to your domestic hot water system. Not a great idea as it would mean that the water in your heating system would be continually changing. Whenever new water is introduced into a boiler, you get deposits and air. Water and air equals corrosion. My guess is that your boiler might last you about 6 months before it became blocked or started leaking.

By now, you will have guessed that none of the above makes any sense to save 50p a dayl

PS You do not need heating On 24/7 in a new house in Winter. It is much more important to open windows whenever you can to let moisture dissipate. High temperatures also cause the plaster to dry out too quickly resulting in cracks.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

It seems to me that you are confusing your 'conventional' boiler and Hot Water system(with a hot water tank) with a Combi boiler.

A combi boiler does indeed heat the mains water directly and feeds it straight to the various taps in the house.

The water in your hot water tank is fed from the mains - usually via the cold water tank. It is then heated indirectly by the boiler. This is done by a pipe from the boiler which passes through the hot water tank, thus heating the water. This pipe is a closed loop from boiler to tank and return to boiler and the water circulates until the tank contents have reached the required temperature, or the hot water is switched off.

There is no possibility of your conventional boiler feeding hot water directly to the taps.

As your house is new build, it must have a well insulated hot water tank and it will lose very little heat.