Hot water tank

Sterlingtimes

My hot water cylinder has a top mounted heating element which is sometimes heated by solar produce electricity. A shower pump sucks water from a position located halfway down the tank. Does the shower pump suck first the hot water at the top of the tank or the cold water at the bottom of the tank? Or is there a blending effect?

mgbond

This might be a similar issue to what I have found.


My Shower and hot water are taken directly from the top of the tank, I do have a secondary hot water output about a third of the way down the tank that like you feeds an electric shower that's pumped (although we don't really use that shower).


Basically the solar is only heating the top part of the tank so tonight I will be removing that element and fitting a 36" one so the solar heats the whole tank.


The water in the tank does not mix (although apparently you can get a pump added).
Do I assume like me that your cylinder is also heated by gas, if so then the gas coils in the tank are to heat the tank and the element at the top is a kind of boost so if all the hot water was used up then the element would just heat a smaller volume of water at the top so you could wash the dishes etc.


So for £30 just change the element to a longer one relating to the height of your cylinder.


Hope that makes sense.

Sterlingtimes

Thank you, mgbond. Yes, it is about the same here and I do use gas to heat the hot water. There are four adults in the house who take exceedingly long power showers: Seven Trent equates our water usage as being equal to 21 showers per day.

Over the course of the last 12 months, we have generated 3188 kWh and exported 794 kWh. Our exporter is compulsorily metered and we received income of £41.60.

I suspect that we are about as efficient as we can get.

mgbond

You can also get a dual thermostat where it has a long and short element and if you have a dual output IBoost then you can use the solar to first heat the small element and then once that's hot it diverts remaining power of the day to the 2nd element (I think that's how it would work).

ajbell

From this point of the year onwards you will have all the free hot water you can use and pretty soon you will have a lot more energy than you will know what to do with.
My system peaks at around 28 kwh max for a day in may/june/July.