Immersion hot water not lasting long enough!
- Thread starter LeeFL
- Start date
Right the guy from Clarion who came this morning said, and he was honest too, that the immersion is “crap” and he won’t be able to solve the hot water duration issue, the tank and elements are fine and said it’s awful that they are still in place but because these flats when built in the 60s that they have never ever had gas, always immersion.
He also mentioned I don’t really want to be using the boost to heat up as it’s slow, s@#t and costs a fortune and doesn’t heat up enough for when you want and need it. He advised me to go down the aids and adaptions route, due to my disability, to gain permission to get an electric shower and walk in shower enclosure and have the bath removed as he said it’s “pointless” if I can’t run a proper bath and without running out of hot water.
See attached photos of the thermostats.
He also mentioned I don’t really want to be using the boost to heat up as it’s slow, s@#t and costs a fortune and doesn’t heat up enough for when you want and need it. He advised me to go down the aids and adaptions route, due to my disability, to gain permission to get an electric shower and walk in shower enclosure and have the bath removed as he said it’s “pointless” if I can’t run a proper bath and without running out of hot water.
See attached photos of the thermostats.
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Sorry, I am not convinced. If those photos are of the lower element, and everything is working properly, including that off-peak timer, off-peak element, and it's stat - then you should have lashings of hot water to fill a normal bath.
As already said - the boost, just makes use of the upper element, to heat a smaller quantity of water, should the main store of off-peak heated water, be exhausted. Per litre of hot water, yes they are expensive to use - more than twice the cost of your off-peak heated water. Which is why it is so essential, to ensure you get a full charge of hot water, and up to temperature, during the cheap E7 period.
As said, my cylinder is around 120L, although usually gas heated, but we find that more than adequate for hot baths.
Maybe you should turn the heaters OFF for a couple of nights to determine how much energy is going into the hot water tank
Here is a screenshot of energy usage during the times when the tank should be heating up. This was on days before the heaters were switched on.
I might be wrong as I don’t claim at all to have knowledge in this area, but glancing at these energy usage readings to me suggests the tank isn’t fully charging??
I might be wrong as I don’t claim at all to have knowledge in this area, but glancing at these energy usage readings to me suggests the tank isn’t fully charging??
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All immersion heater elements, consume around the 3kw. Your maximum in those graphs is 1.43Kwh, which suggests a small storage heater is charging up, rather than your immersion heater. That seems to suggest, your cylinder is not being charged up with hot water, during off-peak at all. The only hot water you would seem to have, the limited amount, provided by that boost system.
I wonder, have you checked your consumer unit, to see if any of the MCB's in there might have tripped?
Other than that - either the off-peak element, the thermostat, or the clock have failed, assuming the supply is OK.
^^ my thoughts but how is the water being heated unless it’s a 1.5 kw immersion?
OP is making use of the boost!
I’m not using the boost, as it’s so insufficient and costs a fortune for inadequate boost heat. When the hot water runs out running a bath I resort to boiling the kettle for top ups.
Regarding those last graphs I showed you above were days when ALL heaters were switched off, none were charging at all.
This is all making me now question somewhat the guy who came out today, from HA, not a third party contractor. He believes my cold water is from the mains, yet after he left and I wish I had questioned him on it but what is the black box above my hot water tank?? (See photo below).
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My best guess is that the E7 is heating the top immersion, and the boost is connected to the lower immersion. And the immersion is a 1.5 kw unit
OK, so the E7 element, must be heating at least some water. That means it is not getting enough time to heat it, or the thermostat is switching off at too low a temperature. Resolve those issues, and you will have your hot water.
That is an header tank, as you draw hot water from the cylinder, it will be topped up by that tank.
Ah thanks for clarifying, I did suspect it was to do with the cylinder tank as it connecting to it via the copper pipe. Makes sense now.
Seen this plenty!
Bottom immersion fails and instead of being replaced, wiring just gets connected to top immersion... Always HA properties.
The thermostats seemed to be set to just over 60 degrees (I’ve attached photos of them again just to be sure)
Unless I’m blind but can’t see the immersion kw info on the cylinder (see attached)
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