What a twat I am! And also don’t do this.

[Ozgirl75]

So my electricity bill has a “this is where your power is going” section and mine shows that I use a LOT on hot water heating. So I thought, hmmm maybe it’s on too hot?
So I googled how to turn down the temp and there was a sensible looking video on how to turn down the thermostat, which involved unscrewing a panel and turning a screw inside. So I duly turned off the power (as it said to), and was merrily turning the screw with the degrees setting on it, when “ouch!” I got a bloody electric shock!
Honestly nearly crapped myself with fear and surprise. That will teach me to mess around with things that I don’t really understand 😬😬 and also to just blindly follow YouTube videos.
So learn from my fail and don’t mess around with the inside of your hot water heater.

Yes I’m sure it is - but there’s no way of turning it on and off apart from through the fuse box.

Really? I can go months, sometimes years, at a time without having a conversation about boilers.

Well you’re in one now 😜

I’d ask a plumber to come and fit a timer. In the uk if you have a hot water tank you usually have timers for hot water and heating separately. them you’d have it heat the tank for an hour before you get up and then in the evening again.

a programmable timer is what you could ask for…

Mines at 55c, the risk of legionella bacterium in a domestic setting is minimal.

Your more at risk from that if you don’t use additives in your cars screenwash reservoir.

@LaGioconda i went 34 years without a single boiler conversations

to remark that you sometimes go months without a boiler conversation does kinda make my point

income protection insurance - on the other hand - Australians don’t shut up about and have not heard a peep about it here. But I digress…

I can actually see on my smart meter info that my main amount of power used is between 10.30pm and 12.30am which I assume is when the water heater comes on? It fluctuates the rest of the day in ways that make sense (on more at 6pm when I cook etc). So it isn’t on ALL the time, only around 3 hours per day.

I live in a four bed house and use about 8kw a day (though can do 6 some days). 19-27 kw seems very high.

Ooh now income protection insurance i can discuss.

Im afraid id just call a plumber and get a switch installed.

[Anyone else itching to quote Hilaire Belloc]

I genuinely don’t understand it. We don’t have a pool, we don’t have air con yet, we have a 5 bed house with 3 living areas but it’s not like I have much on all the time. No gaming stuff, I turn stuff off at the points, don’t use the tumble dryer, only do one wash and one dishwash, sometimes two per day.

That's terrifying - you could have been killed. Are you ok?

So I’ve attached photos - you can see it’s using over 2kwh at night when I’m in bed asleep! Much more than in the day.

Well yes.

I have a knob on the boiler as well. Which from the sounds of it probably a good thing.

Being able to know where your power is being used is really useful. Do you have some kind of super smart meter? I wish we had things like that

I suppose so - it’s handy right? Plus it shows me how much money I’m spending day by day and gives me a bill estimate, it’s super handy.

I was wondering why OP said she hasn't even switched the air con on yet.
It all makes sense now. (No advice on the boiler front though, sorry)

I am half Australian half British. It is not a boiler that is standard in British homes. It is a hot water heater standard in Australian homes. It will turn on once or multiple times a day depending on your electricity plan. The cheapest option is for it to turn on in the middle of the night (off-peak) and heat the water and then store it until you need it. If you use it all the stored hot water before the next heating period then it will either heat more hot water in a peak-time (expensive) or you will have cold water until the next off-peak heating period. Hope this helps.

That does help @Catandthemoon and matches with what my bill suggests too.
I just wonder if it’s on too long. There are only 4 of us, we only have a shower each per day and then I assume the washing machine uses it, but again, that’s only once a day.
We had a power cut for a week three years ago and we didn’t run out of hot water for 4 days so it’s not like we run it out quickly. It’s a massive tank!

Never tamper with electricity.

darwinawards.com

One of the best things I did recently to help with costs was to update my heating and hot water controls so that I could change and tweak the timings to suit the house on that specific day.
That tank should be able to hold enough water and keep it hot for your household for a whole day, therefore it only needs to be on once to heat a tank. Talk to an electrician about getting a timer fitted so it can heat a tankful from about 4am to 6am when electricity is cheaper.

I've also had the wiring on my tank changed so that it only heats up the booster tank rather than the full tank as we are quite low users (2 showers and a bit for the kitchen tap) which makes it cheaper too.

I'm in Australia. Have a similar system.

Call Rheem and find out who services in your area. Get a service done & ask how to care for it properly, including temp. The shock might mean you have an electrical issue.

Proper servicing isn't expensive because it extends the life of your unit massively. Mine also has to have a pressure valve released regularly.

Great idea, I’ll do that!

In the uk, we'd call that a hot water cylinder or tank.

What we now call a boiler heats the water that circulates in radiators as well as the water that's stored in the tank.

Tanks often have an immersion heater as well, for topping up the hot water.

Oh no!