I thought I’d put down some thoughts on water heating, as it’s a topic we don’t often cover.
We use gas for heating , water heating and cooking. I think the latter contributes little to our usage and I can’t measure it so I’ll put that to one side for the moment. However, by separating the times the boiler fires to heat the hot water from the general house heating I can make an approximation of the consumption on each, using downloaded smart meter data. Also I can do this because we have a hot water storage tank, which isn't so common these days as Combi Boilers are the most often used boilers. Nevertheless if people look as their gas consumption in the summer months, when the heating is probably off, then it must be highly likely that that the vast majority of that gas is being used on heating hot water.
We also have a solar thermal panel which heats our hot water almost 100% in the summer, with lesser contributions outside of that. Anyway by analysing my data I think a full year of heating our hot water would be an input of 4,000 kWh. Not that we actually use that much, because the solar thermal panel works very well. For example the average daily consumption for water heating in February –March was 11 kWh, while in April it was 4.3 kWh and in May it was 3.3 kWh. But the point is that heating water does actually use a lot of energy. We have showers every day, and I confess they’re not particularly short. Apart from that the hot water is used for dishwashing and general hand washing, water to wash floors etc. We don’t have baths, nor do we have an electric shower, while the washing machine and dishwasher are cold fill, so no hot water used there. We wash up our pots and pans and use the dishwasher for plates, cups and saucers and cutlery – it goes on every 6 days or so, when its full!
I can fully understand why energy saving advice encourages us to have shorter showers. Ours are gas fuelled in the winter, but if we had electric showers the fuel price is 4+ times as much, so the incentive to make them shorter is much more powerful.
So, should we think more about our hot water costs?
We use gas for heating , water heating and cooking. I think the latter contributes little to our usage and I can’t measure it so I’ll put that to one side for the moment. However, by separating the times the boiler fires to heat the hot water from the general house heating I can make an approximation of the consumption on each, using downloaded smart meter data. Also I can do this because we have a hot water storage tank, which isn't so common these days as Combi Boilers are the most often used boilers. Nevertheless if people look as their gas consumption in the summer months, when the heating is probably off, then it must be highly likely that that the vast majority of that gas is being used on heating hot water.
We also have a solar thermal panel which heats our hot water almost 100% in the summer, with lesser contributions outside of that. Anyway by analysing my data I think a full year of heating our hot water would be an input of 4,000 kWh. Not that we actually use that much, because the solar thermal panel works very well. For example the average daily consumption for water heating in February –March was 11 kWh, while in April it was 4.3 kWh and in May it was 3.3 kWh. But the point is that heating water does actually use a lot of energy. We have showers every day, and I confess they’re not particularly short. Apart from that the hot water is used for dishwashing and general hand washing, water to wash floors etc. We don’t have baths, nor do we have an electric shower, while the washing machine and dishwasher are cold fill, so no hot water used there. We wash up our pots and pans and use the dishwasher for plates, cups and saucers and cutlery – it goes on every 6 days or so, when its full!
I can fully understand why energy saving advice encourages us to have shorter showers. Ours are gas fuelled in the winter, but if we had electric showers the fuel price is 4+ times as much, so the incentive to make them shorter is much more powerful.
So, should we think more about our hot water costs?
Last edited by DebF_EONNext; 05-06-25 at 14:39. Reason: featured thread
Current Eon Next customer, ex EDF, Zog and Symbio. Don't think dual fuel saves money and think the smart meter programme is a waste of our money. Chronologically Gifted. If I offend let me know by private message, but I’ll continue to express my opinions nonetheless.
