Turning the immersion heater off

Just3Dreamies

The hot water in our flat is rubbish. It takes ages to warm up and then we only get a trickle. It's a very cheap flat and we don't want to complain. But would it be a problem if we just left the immersion heater off? Can we just turn the switch in the cupboard off and leave it off, and could we save money by doing that? Our shower heats the water itself, and we can boil the kettle for washing up. I think we have an electric immersion heater, and we have Economy 7 electricity. I don't think there's any danger of our pipes freezing because we're surrounded by other flats and our flat never gets very cold. I assume we would need to run the hot water for a while when we eventually turn the boiler on again. Any thoughts?

Swipe

No problem leaving it off. I think many people underestimate how severely cold and for how long a time it would take for internal pipes to actually freeze and burst, especially if there is water flowing through them. You are talking prolonged beast from the east conditions with no heating on at all. Obviously pipes and tanks in the loft space are a different matter.

Just3Dreamies

Thank you! That's good to know.

JJ_Egan

My immersion is never on unless sudden full tank. visitors etc required ,

Off as it eats electric .

FreeBear

JJ_Egan said:

My immersion is never on unless sudden full tank. visitors etc required ,

Off as it eats electric .

Pulled the fuse on mine. It hasn't been used for <mumble><mumble> years. But then I do have a gas boiler to heat the HW tank.

Gerry1

If you have a gas boiler then you should be using that for hot water, not a very expensive electric shower or expensive immersion heater.

If you mean a hot tank rather than a boiler then you should be using E7 for your hot water, not switching anything on just before it's required.

Make sure any second immersion heater (possibly labelled 'Boost') halfway up the tank is always left switched off because it can use very expensive day rate electricity.

Just3Dreamies

Gerry1, thanks for your suggestions. We don't have a gas boiler. I was mistakenly calling the immersion heater a boiler. I have checked for a second immersion heater, but we don't seem to have one, so I think we're ok.