Immersion heater Leave on or turn off

aj9648

Hi

I have an immersion heater with electric timer using Horstmann 7 - my question (may be a stupid one) is should I turn this off when not in use i.e. during the day when everyone is at work to save electricity or should i leave it on? (or is there no difference)?

Sorry if its a daft question !!!!

espresso

aj9648 wrote: »

Hi

I have an immersion heater with electric timer using Horstmann 7 - my question (may be a stupid one) is should I turn this off when not in use i.e. during the day when everyone is at work to save electricity or should i leave it on? (or is there no difference)?

Sorry if its a daft question !!!!

The purpose of the E7 timeswitch is to save you money, so how would switching the timer off save you money?

aj9648

Well....the thing is I dont have economy - when I rang Eon they said I was on a flat tariff - should I switch??

espresso

aj9648 wrote: »

Well....the thing is I dont have economy - when I rang Eon they said I was on a flat tariff - should I switch??

Do the sums for yourself, as it depends on your region/supplier/tariff but any heating using standard rate electricity is the most expensive!

virgo149

Are you talking about turning the entire unit off to save on power to the timing unit?

I doubt keeping the actual timer unit switched on will cost too much.

Now if you are querying about running the heater all day at work I would guess that's a no no. We were always told as kids that the emersion heaters should only be put on when absolutely necessary for short periods of time as they cost a lot of money - mind you that was the 70's when fuel was precious and expensive.

A good test is see how fast your little electricity dial runs when it's switched on, then turn off and compare - we did this with various items in the house and it's quite scary what happens.

completely unscientific I know but it works for us!

aj9648

I shall try that and see what happens - I was asking talking about the entire unit.

tomstickland

A well lagged hot water tank loses about 3 units per day.This isn't a huge amount. The only way you can save any money on a fixed tarrif is to have the immersion heaters come on about an hour before you use the hot water. So you could set the timer for 6-7am and 3-4pm.

If you change over to an E7 tarrif you can run the heater only at night. If you do this you will typically break even if your hot water usage is low, but start to save if you use a bit more, say for baths.

aj9648

Cheers Tom - I guess you know lots of things about immersion heaters - saw your pics when you "messed" up changing the elements !!!!

beer_tins

RE: switching, do you have storage heaters to heat your home? If so, it is definitely worth your while to switch to E7.