Unsure about heating water with immersion heater

[Jastinder]

As the property has a working gas boiler, i'd have expected that it would be the primary source of heat for the cylinder, rather than the immersion. Immersion's a backup, not something you'd leave on (because then it will use its own internal thermostat and keep the tank hot, possibly hotter than the boiler would, meaning you'd be paying to use electricity to generate hot water)


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Sorry for being a dummy

Should this therefore be heated using the hot water advance? Definitely when it was turned off, the upstairs bathroom taps were cold. So I am sure it's needed for the taps.

And if so how long should the hot water advance be timed for during the day?

For the shower, I'll see if it works with the hot water advance by keeping the immersion heater switched off.

 

[fixitflav]

Valiant ecofit pure

Don't think it is a combi

Does the boiler heat the HW cylinder? For it to do that, the controls must be calling for it, and the motorised valves and thermostats must be working correctly.

 

[robinbanks]

Should this therefore be heated using the hot water advance?

An advance or boost button allows you to trigger hot water (or central heating) generation without disturbing an existing timed program - it's not necessarily something you always press to get hot water, unless you've never set up a timed program

Your water and heating controller is essentially a timer and switches. You can program it so that hot water is generated between 4 and 5 am, then the central heating comes on between 5 and 7am and 6 and 8 pm. If you prefer to shower in the evening you might pick 5 to 6pm for the hot water generation. The clock in the timer ticks away and when it comes to 4 am it flicks on and asks the boiler to generate hot water, and that water is sent to the cylinder to be stored ready for your shower. At 5am the program stops doing that and starts asking for central heating instead - the boiler carries on creating hot water, but it flows round the rads instead (I'm not saying these times have to be mutualyl exclusive either, I'm just outlining this time program for simplicity of explanation)

If you had your hot water program set for the morning and the kids used all the hot water before school, then you came in from a run at 3pm and wanted a shower, you'd hit the hot water advance button to do a one time manual fire up of the boiler to heat the tank for your shower. This means you wouldnt have to mess around setting a program for 3pm - 4pm for hot water, and then delete it again at 4pm so it didn't run every day needlessly

Things might well be wired such that the immersion works in tandem with a timer controller or independently of it. Your ultimate control over whether the immersion activates or not is the switch on the wire that goes to the immersion. If it's off, then the immersion isn't ever active. If it's on then it either activates under instruction from some timer or it activates immediately because it's independent of it. In either case it has its own thermostat so that it will power off when the tank reaches a certain temperature. I'd expect, in a system with a gas boiler, that the immersion wouldn't be part of a timed program and instead would be manually controlled by your finger if the boiler was inoperative.

 

[Johntheo5]

Post a photo of the timer/programmer and it will be easy to point out which button to press for a 1hr (or/and 2hr) HW heating period which is the simpmist way to check for boiler fire up and motorized valve opening, its simply a manual (timed) demand for cylinder heating.

 

[fixitflav]

Post a photo of the timer/programmer and it will be easy to point out which button to press for a 1hr (or/and 2hr) HW heating period which is the simpmist way to check for boiler fire up and motorized valve opening, its simply a manual (timed) demand for cylinder heating.

OP still seems to be hung up on the timer for the immersion. Hopefully if he does as you say we'll know whether the boiler heats it as it should.