Separate heating & hot water...?

[Roger465]

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in summer when I am using gas to heat the cylinder (no central heating), my average gas usage is

0.75 cu.m/day

8.4 kWh/day

22pence/day

plus VAT and standing charge


This includes showers and some baths, and some washing up. We have a hot-fill washing machine so this cuts electricity costs but increases HW use. The boiler is timed for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. Even if it was fully cold it would be hot in about half an hour, after which the thermostat stops the boiler trying to heat it. So yours is actually not being heated for several hours a day, unless for some reason you have chosen to have an uninsulated cylinder and unlagged pipes.


If you were just using HW in the kitchen sink and to wash your hands yours would be less.


Energy from electricity costs about four times as much as energy from gas.


I can't see that your electric shower is a money saver. If you stopped heating your cylinder you would save a matter of pence per day.


Have a look at your summer gas usage records.

Thanks for doing all that John. Yes, my tank is insulated, pipes lagged etc, so I’m sure you're right about it using less power than I thought to heat the water… unfortunately, the way my mind works is a bit Spock-like, and it just grates constantly to be expending energy on something I don’t use! Nothing to be done about that, it's the way I am.

I don’t even use the kitchen sink, you see, having a dishwasher.

And I know that electricity is the most expensive way of heating anything, but the electric showers came with the house, so unless I have them ripped out, I haven't got a lot of choice. Given a free choice, I’d prefer not to have them, which would make hot water more desirable.

Another factor is that I live alone, so again I’m heating water for nobody to use…

Anyway, think maybe we’ve done this one to death now… thanks everybody for your input