Can you clever lot help me fathom out our hot water??

MakingUpGround

I think are on electric hot water, but wanting to check and hear your thoughts. Many thanks

OK, so we moved in here 4 years ago. 
This control panel, makes no difference to the hot water, only our heating. Either it is not working or not required/fixed up for what we have. The hot water is always switched to off. 



We have an immersion tank in the airing cupboard. It's not huge, probably explains why we can only get washing up and 1 bath in an evening, but that's ok for us with planning and recycling bath water lol

My dad thinks it has a timing switch which doesn't work, which should connect to the control panel?
These are better close ups of what there is:






So, this hasn't really bothered me that we have hot water all the time, we are are family of 3. Our electric bills don't seem too bad if I'm honest, but obviously with prices soaring I need to see if I need to sort this out. Our electric usage monthly ranges between 300-400KWH

Thank you. Sorry for the large pics

Sandtree

Photo of the boiler?

Others that are more expert than I will come along but certainly in my parents house they had a traditional gas boiler that did hot water and heating, the hot water when into a storage tank and the storage tank had an emersion heater too so you could effectively decide if to heat the hot water by gas or electric but the intent was it was mainly gas and the electric for.a quick top up of heat if you needed it.

Verdigris

It seems you probably have the immersion heater switched on all time. Switch it off and let the boiler heat the water. It'll cost about a quarter of the price. Only set the boiler to provide hot water at the times you need it, rather than continuously.

You only need the immersion heater, as a back-up, if the boiler breaks down.

Gerry1

https://www.draytoncontrols.co.uk/sites/default/files/UG. IG. LP522.pdf

MakingUpGround

Verdigris said:

It seems you probably have the immersion heater switched on all time. Switch it off and let the boiler heat the water. It'll cost about a quarter of the price. Only set the boiler to provide hot water at the times you need it, rather than continuously.

You only need the immersion heater, as a back-up, if the boiler breaks down.

Thank you. Do you mean switch it off at the switch on the wall next to it? Sorry if that's a really daft question. 
I guess I won't know if the gas will heat it unless I switch it off and see what happens

Verdigris

Do you mean switch it off at the switch on the wall next to it?

Yes

MakingUpGround

I don't think our gas heats the water. I've just turned it on at the control panel, run the bath, but the boiler didn't fire up 

GrumpyDil

Your hot water comes from the tank so the boiler won't automatically fire up as a reaction to drawing water.

Make sure your immersion is turned off, then once you have used a decent amount of hot water try turning the hot water switch on at your boiler controls to see if the boiler fires up. 

[Deleted User]

MakingUpGround said:

I don't think our gas heats the water. I've just turned it on at the control panel, run the bath, but the boiler didn't fire up 

Did you do anything to the selector on the LHS of the ACL control panel; ie, the slider that currently states the HW heating is off? 

MakingUpGround

Ok, so we have used all the water in the tank. I turned the immersion off at the wall. I turned the water to 'on' on the panel.
The boiler seemed to fire up ( I turned the heating off), but the water still wasn't hot 

MakingUpGround

oh, ok, I think I'm getting my head about this. So the gas should now be re-heating the water and filling the tank?