Issue with hot water, heating controls

Where did that figure come from?

Forget the house heating and cooking for a moment. I don't know how much hot water you use but, by my reckoning, to heat a (140 litre) tank of water each day from, say 18°C to 62°C would, alone, use roughly that amount of energy (I make it 2,623 kWh/year, ignoring losses).
So toss in a bit of loss, and 2785kWh/year seems realistic.


However, when BAS wrote "This place is going to cost a fortune to run.", I presume that he was referring to the total cost of running your 'all electric' house, not just the water heating, which is presumably but a small part of the total electrical energy consumption.
I absolutely was.

He's got 3.75kW of full-rate electric heating too.


2785 kWh/annum which is less then 35 GBP/month with hot water available at anytime.
That's £3,900pa just for hot water. Plus just over £0.50/hour whenever you have the heating on.


We didn’t had this problems previously, we used gas boilers.. hot water was coming 24/7.
What were your gas bills before?
 
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For some reason people with electric heating cannot get their head round the fact that electricity costs 3 times as much as gas. Yet they only have to look at the kW hour cost quoted on their bills.
 
For some reason people with electric heating cannot get their head round the fact that electricity costs 3 times as much as gas. Yet they only have to look at the kW hour cost quoted on their bills.
Indeed, although electricity gets a lot more reasonable if one can take advantage of tariffs like E7. Also, there are a good few like me whose gas is necessarily LPG, which is a lot more expensive than natural gas.

Although I have gas (LPG) CH, my water heating is usually all E7 electric. A (very well lagged) cylinder full of hot water, heated only with cheap-rate electricity nearly always lasts us for 24 hours, without any need for top ups. For fairly rare occasions, like the next few days (with a 'house full' of people), we have a second cylinder with immersions (only used on these very high demand occasions) and, again, the two cylinders full of hot water usually last everyone for the 24 hours.

What is the going (kWh) rate for natural gas? My cheap-rate E7 is currently 6.89p per kWh.

Kind Regards, John
 
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I'm paying 3.55p per kWh, 2 year fix with OVO energy. Electricity is 14.05p per kWh. If you assume electricity is 100% efficient for heating and gas maybe 85% efficient due to losses up the chimney and from pipes under the ground floor I am still quids in. Need to factor in that there are two standing charges of course. Don't know what LPG costs but someone in an area similar to yours told me it was nearly as expensive as electricity.
 
I'm paying 3.55p per kWh, 2 year fix with OVO energy. Electricity is 14.05p per kWh. If you assume electricity is 100% efficient for heating and gas maybe 85% efficient due to losses up the chimney and from pipes under the ground floor I am still quids in. Need to factor in that there are two standing charges of course. Don't know what LPG costs but someone in an area similar to yours told me it was nearly as expensive as electricity.
I'm currently getting a very preferential rate for LPG (as an incentive to stay with Calor!), but I think the standard price (which I was paying until fairly recently) is currently around 9p per kWh. That's still quite a lot less than single-tariff electricity, but sufficiently greater than cheap-rate E7 electricity cost for it to be worth my while to use nocturnal electricity, rather than LPG, to heat water.

I suppose there would be a similar argument for heating with night storage heaters rather than LPG, but given all the downsides of that, coupled with the fact that my house is really far too large for storage heaters to be a sensible option, I bite my lip and mainly use LPG - although I do use the likes of fan heaters if I need 'local heating' during cheap-rate electricity hours (like now :) ).

Kind Regards, John
 
Previously I’ve payed with gas+electricity around 40£/ month.

Now I setted my debit for 100£/month.

Indeed only the heating of the water will cost me around 31£/month only for hot water.

I will add all the electrical heating and the other consumers probably I will end up paying around 1000£/ year which is not bad. Either way I knew this when we bought the place and we consider this so.. even if we will pay more we’re ready for it.

As long as I sort it out with my hot water to stand for 2 full baths and change my electric heaters with ones which have wifi integrated or wire technology so I can set them as I want without to much hassle everything is gonna be alright.

Before taking the plan from British Gas I’ve checked the market on different comparisons websites and this had almost the best rates. I’m happy with them for now..
 
Indeed only the heating of the water will cost me around 31£/month only for hot water. .... I will add all the electrical heating and the other consumers probably I will end up paying around 1000£/ year which is not bad.
I would certainly regard that, if attainable, as extremely reasonable.

I wonder if this is a very modern 'eco house' designed to be very energy efficient?

What sort of electric heating do you have? The traditional approach in an 'all electric' house would be to have night storage heaters run primarily off cheap-rate electricity - but, from what you've said, it sounds as if you have single-tariff electricity, and therfore will be doing most of your space heating with 'standard rate' electricity.

If you could arrange things so that your cheap rate (night-time) usage was more than about one third of your total usage and if your hot water cylinder were large enough, and well enough lagged, to provide your "2 full baths" (and, of course heating properly!), a dual-rate tariff could probably save you a fair bit. For example, your 2785 kWh/year of water heating would (if all at night) cost me, on my E7 tariff, £15.99/month, rather than the £31/month you are paying.

Merry Christmas!

Kind Regards, John
 

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