Cylinder advice

casper_gutman

Kiran said:

Albermarle said:

Southend_2 said:

Is your hot water temperature set point too low? If you store the water at a higher temperature, each shower will use less from the tank than if stored lower. 

It is a good point, but you would have to be careful that the hot water did not scald anybody out of the shower/tap. For that reason it is not recommended not to have the HW too hot .

The main problem is that the OP is having rather long showers, combined with only an average sized tank.

You don't need to worry about the scalding issues with a mixer as they have built in blending valves, you do have to be careful on any taps that feed directly from the hot water though.

We've got a 200L tank that heats up to 55degrees. it then used to 2 adults to shower, 2 young kids to get ready for school and usually 1 adult and 1 child shower in the evening and that still leaves enough for washing up etc. We use our immersion to heat the tank as we use the solar, we do have solar thermal which is effective from about March/April until October so that does a decent amount but in the winter months we only have it heating for a couple of hours.

I'd check what temperature you are heating the water to, and also if the volume is not sufficient, have the tank reheating during the period you are likely to be taking showers

A thermostatic mixer shower will have a blending valve which (if it's working correctly) should remove the risk of scalding. But a mixer tap generally won't help with this and care would still be needed.

Kiran

casper_gutman said:

A thermostatic mixer shower will have a blending valve which (if it's working correctly) should remove the risk of scalding. But a mixer tap generally won't help with this and care would still be needed.

Yes, sorry wasn't clear. That's what I meant by direct from the hot feed

BobT36

Thanks all. The thermostat is currently a Drayton LP722. 
There's a box on the cylinder (presumably the water temperature) that's set to 60. 

Definitely bigger tank will help, I think (as well as a better thermostat). Might actually be able to run two showers then, lol. Good to know the boiler is alright, I was worried about that.