Electric boilers

oswcelticfan

Can anyone give me some advice. I have been told that it maybe cheaper to leave my electric boiler on all of the time instead of on a timer. I am told it would be cheaper to top up a bit often than heating the full tank a couple of times a day? I am also on economy 7 heating and have the boiler heating up at about 4am so i can have a shower in the mornings. (Mixer taps) Please can someone advise what would be cheaper as i dont know?

paceinternet

If you are on Economy 7, you have to heat as much water as possible during 1 - 8am (or whatever your time period is). If you leave it on all the time, the tank will be up to temperature at 12.59 am and unlikely to do much work on E7 until you start to use the hot water for your shower.
The least cost method would be to have the hot water boiler on during the E7 period. Then for you to finish showering and all your night time hot water useage by for example 6 am, then allowing 2 hours for the tank to heat up again for daytime hot water.
Not necessarily practical, and the timing would need to be experimented with, but in principle, I think that would be the least cost method.
Even bettter is to have a big enough storage tank so that you do not have to heat water outside of the E7 period, and insulate it to excess.

Cardew

When you say "electric boiler" I assume you mean a Hot Water(HW) tank with an immersion heater(normally situated in an airing cupboard) and not a small boiler that provides 'instantaneous' hot water??

If you only have a shower, then the HW in your tank heated up during the economy 7 hours should be sufficient to last all day.

Many immersion heaters are wired so they only come on during E7 period, and have a facility to heat up during the day if required.

The bottom line is that you should most certainly not have it switched on 'all of the time' have it on only during the E7 period, with it on for as short a time as possible if you need it during the day.