What setting is your hot water on for min costs (frequency and time?)

[ChickpeaFlour]

We have always had ours on twice a day and it’s always piping . I am wondering what is best , we are a family of 5

There are threads on this every year, there are online articles & 'professional opinions' and NO conclusion.

I have a combi now, I want hot water, hey presto-hot water! Just like magic!

It very much depends on your system & your usage.

if you're thinking about the cost, why not scale back how long it's on for each time, until there's suddenly not enough hot water for someone's shower or whatever. Then you can move it back a little bit longer.

or alternatively how long does it take to get hit enough for a shower?

or everyone has shorter showers...

there's no right/wrong answers, just tweaking it for your individual needs, according to your individual system.

combis may have their faults/limitations, but they're SO much easier!!

We have a hot water tank (heated via has boiler)

30 minutes a day

Normally get two baths and hot water for the taps

Thank you so much .

We've just scaled back to 30 minutes every other day to see if that is sufficient. Family of 6, but with a dishwasher and electric showers. And I like to wash my face in cold water.

I experimented with this earlier this year with my boiler engineer on board as he warned that hot water has to be heated and stored at minimum of 60 centigrade to avoid legionnaires disease.

I have a gas boiler and a separate water tank next to it. Temperature to heat to is set to 60 degrees.

I used to heat it quite a lot but reduced and reduced and now I know the minimum I can get away with to heat to the correct temperature and have hot showers for 24 hours is 12-13 minutes, once a day. I set it for the early evening as we are evening shower people rather than morning.

Hope that helps. Was very pleasantly surprised how little I needed to have it on and gas bill has plummeted as a result.

We have 45 mins once a day and have never run out so we can probably adjust that down until we do run out!

i have just changed mine to morning only = an hour i think
will keep an eye on it = with a plan to reduce if all goes well

The dishwasher isn't run off the boiler, it will heat up cold water itself.

**same as electric shower

Once a week if one of us has a bath, otherwise it is off in the summer. The ambient temperature of the little room where the airing cupboard is keeps the water warm enough to use.

Similar to LadyH but a little less often and hopefully less often again now my DS has left for a live-in training course.

We’ve spoken about energy use/costs and reduced a lot in the last year but I was accepting that his comfort levels meant I couldn’t cut back as much as I would be if alone, not least because I didn’t want a battlefield over it either.

I think perhaps that is a hidden stress, especially in bigger households, balancing the differing comfort levels of everyone in the house whilst trying to reduce as much as possible.

It might make winter more fractious for many and I feel for anyone in that position, or unable to reduce due to health needs

I’m very lucky to be able to manage with the basics, and to not have to consider anyone else in the house this coming winter.

Except the cats, but they’re not keen on showers and have never done the dishes, the lazy sods.

15 mins a morning is enough for three showers for us-ours draws water from hot water tank.

Last winter when I was watching the smart metre like a hawk ( it went up to £10 a day!) I switched the immersion off. It's been off since March. Kids use the electric shower or boil a kettle for a bath. Boil a cup of water to wash up things that I don't dishwasher. It's not been missed at all. I can boost it via the thermostat but tbh unless it's a bath I don't do that ever.

Come winter I might but it on every day just for the kids baths.

I changed the way I wash pans up years ago. I don't fill the bowl up. Just wash each pan individually in its own cup of water from a sponge as I hate the way grease builds upon a bowl of pans / baking trys. Ghis feels much cleaner and using less hot water wasn't the original intention

Hot water is on once a day for 1 hour
Our shower is electric though so heats its own water. Appliances are cold fill. Need water for dishes not going in the dishwasher, hand washing and the occasional bath.

It is on at 50 degrees celsius. Usually on once a day, but we also have an electric shower and that is a very great deal cheaper so has not been on at all this week.

In terms of legionnaires disease we have copper pipes. But I imagine if you do not have that already it would be prohibitively expensive to put it in.