hot water dispute

[kiwibella]

only between hubs and me. Is it more economical to have the hot water set on a timer or left on constantly. The plumber said constant only tops up the heat as needed instead of heating the whole tank.

What is the best thing to do?

Timer. It is a big fat myth that leaving hot water/heating on constantly is cheaper. If you have it on constantly you are not only heating up the cold water that enters the tank when you draw hot water, but you are also constantly reheating the water already in there as it cools down.

Put it this way, what do you think is the most economical way of making a cup of tea: do you fill the kettle and boil it and then keep on boiling it repeatedly until you next want a cup of tea, or do you wait until you next want one before boiling the kettle?

good point Daisy, thanks! I understand about keeping water hot constantly being an expensive option.

Deffo timer - both our plumber and boiler engineer recommended timer only as and when needed and we saved a lot of £ changing over for all the reasons that DS states. Likewise for CH.

I heat my tank in the morning for 40 minutes (4 bed house 2 bathrooms) it provides enough hot water for 2 showers in the morning and a small bath for my boys at night.

I have a dishwasher so don't use it for washing up.

thanks all... it seems we're doing it wrong . I guess a timer would work normally but we're constantly running out at the moment with extra bodies in the house!!

The dishwasher is another "dispute" whether it would be more economical (but less convenient) to wash up by hand than running the dishwasher once a day!

Ah, well, that depends on a number of things.

The expensive thing is heating your water, which dishwashers do less efficiently than boilers.

If you don't rinse your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, and completely fill the dishwasher before running it, it probably uses less water than washing dishes by hand, although on average the British apparently use less water for washing up than any other country in Europe.

However, it consumes more energy to heat up the water for the dishwasher than for to heat up water for the sink.

You should definitely put your dishwasher on a timer to run it at cheap electricity rates if you can.

decent dishwasher will be more economical and it will use less water for the added green factor