How do I set Ecodan Heating

Mstty

matelodave said:

Why no try it both ways to see what works for you - on all day or just for an hour or so.

I'm of the hour a a day persuasion but in the end suck it and see, life's too short to argue about something this trivial

Most threads end up like this these days, differing opinions so no change there.

Hopefully the OP will see through all the back and forth and give some of the changes a go and see what works best for their house and their setup.

Scoobnut

An hour a day does seem logical. Our heating is set to run from 6am to 6pm. There is four of us in the house although one has just bought her first place so will be moving out (finally ) We have an electric shower, so the water is only used for dishes and hand washing. It seems a waste running it that long for so little use. I like the idea of tracking power use so will do that. Today was the first good day where we didn't have to put the stove until the evening, The heating came on briefly but stopped when it was put into the living room, thank goodness our house is south facing, nice when we get the sun but a nightmare when the wind hits, the poor heating goes into overdrive.

Reed_Richards

An electric shower is likely to cost you more to run than a shower that uses hot water from your cylinder.  That's because the hot water in your cylinder should cost you about a third of the cost of the electric shower for the same amount of hot water.  It's not quite as good as that because you will waste some heat from hot water trapped in the feed pipe after the shower is finished - so it would be most economic if everyone took their showers in quick succession.  There will also be heat lost from the cylinder, which will be wasted in summer but in winter should mostly go towards heating your house.  You'll have that anyway but possibly more if you are using more hot water.

All heating is a trade-off between comfort and cost.  If you heat your hot water for an hour a day in the morning but find it has got rather tepid by the evening then you are definitely saving money but you have the inconvenience of tepid water for part of the day.  If you heat your water for an hour a day in the morning and it's still hot in the evening then that's great but you're probably not saving any money.    

Scoobnut

I've started my experiment.  The heating isn't on so this is just for the water. For the last three days my water was on a schedule of 7am to 6pm and from Wednesday it has used 8kw of electricity. It's not a perfect test but its to give me a rough idea. From what I've seen its the heating that goes through the power. Last year it was just short of 5000kw. This year we're nearly at 3000kw. Both also included the stoves running to. 

I suggested replacing our shower with one that uses the hot water but he said no it would cost a fortune to replace.

Alnat1

Handwashing

1. Turn on hot tap, run the water until it's warm, wash hands and rinse under clean water. (that's maybe now getting too hot) Leave lots of hot water in pipes to cool, unused and wasted.

2. Turn on hot tap, immediately wash and rinse hands in the cold water before water is even warmed. Leave warm water in the pipes to cool, unused and wasted.

3. Turn on cold tap, wash and rinse hands in cold water. No hot water needed or wasted.

I suspect most people do 2, so why not do 3?

If your only other use of hot water is to wash dishes, is it cheaper to boil a kettle of water and use that when needed?

matelodave

I always do 3 but I cannot persuade my wife not to do either 1 or 2, usually she does 1. Its not a problem in the cloakroom as the pipe run from the tank is only around a metre however the kitchen and bathroom pipe runs are around 16 metres and of that, 10 metres is in the loft space.

They are well insulated and have loft insulation over the top but that still a lot of wasted energy sitting in the plumbing and wasted water down the plughole

Alnat1

Research has proved that washing "clean" hands in cold water works just as well as warm/hot. If you've been gardening etc. warm works better.

Can't get my hubby to do this either. He also complains if I turn off the power to the automatic garage door even though he probably only opens it once a fortnight, grrrr.

Reed_Richards

It's a long way from my hot water tank to my kitchen sink, one way, and the main bathroom, the other way.  Now this seems like the height of luxury in the context of other comments but I have a loop that I pump the hot water around, for 5 minutes every hour.  This means that I get hot, or at least warm water, out of my hot taps almost as soon as I turn them on.  But this costs me, these days maybe 50p a day or more. It's a luxury I am prepared to afford at the moment, if it gets too expensive I will have to turn the recirculation pump off.   

Mstty

Crazy that's 20p more a day just to pump your hot water round than for us to heat all the hot water we need for the day. You never did back with your daily figure to heat your hot water all day after saying I was fixated with the way we do it. I am interested if you can beat it with your way?

markin

Are you on Variable DDs? 5000 kwh is not really that much and would be around 140 a month spread out over 12 months, or if you had no credit built up with it being the first winter with the new system it would be a bill shock. Even double that would only be average, If you've had free peat all your life it must be a real shock to the system.

Have you got a record of how many KWH you used monthly when it was heating?

If you cant afford that set it low, say 16c and use peat to make up the difference.

And if you have the savings maybe getting solar system would take the edge off, A 3KW system would give you around 3000kwh a year and cost maybe £4.5k. Around 9 year payback.