Hot Water/Heating Timer

[YesILikeItToo]

The timer on the boiler in my new home doesn’t let me set the water and heating programmes separately. I have a bizarre anxiety about needing to wash and there being no water, so in the past I’ve always had the water on all day, with the heating going off in the day. How long do I need the water to be on in the morning to get me through to four or five with hot water to spare?

Is it a combination boiler ?

Huh! Didn’t think of that - do you mean that if it was I needn’t worry about the water, it’ll heat when I use it?

That sounds unusual, is there a separate timer anywhere? You can easily retrofit a 7 day programmable timer, they tend to be very simple to install. I did one when a house I bought didn't even have a thermostat!

I thought it was odd, but I looked up the instructions on the internet and that’s literally what it’s designed to do - bring them on and off together on the same program. One could be Off, (eg heating in summer) but if they are both on a program, it’s the same one.

It’s a very typical looking timer, just the simplest in the range - so I could just change it up for a better one without interfering with the system too much?

Ours is the same. We have it in for an hour in the morning and 90 mins at 5pm. This alloa for dh to have a shower in the morning and me to do multiple loads of washing up, plus usually an impromptu sink bath for dd. The evening stint allows enough for 3 baths (although not a brand new set of water each time).

If you have a combi boiler (no hot water tank) it should heat the water any time you switch on a hot tap/shower.

That’s helpful, Findahouse - I’m surprised how short a time in the morning you need, to get through the day I was maybe overdoing it with my constant hot water!

Checked this now, it’s nit a combi.

I have an ordinary boiler and it’s on 45 mins on a morning and between 15-30 mins on a night depending on whether the DCs are swimming as they both need bath/shower when they get in.

In Summer it’s only on for 15 mins in morning & 15 mins evening but too cold now.

We used to have one of these in our house, it drove me potty! We ended up getting the company that service the boiler to replace the control panel for something with independent controllers. But in answer to your question we used to have ours on for about an hour in the morning and about 90 minutes in the evening and that usually seemed to do the trick- if I was going to run a bath I might put it on for another 30 minutes just to be on the safe side.

the setting you describe is common with older boilers having a gravity HW feed.

How old do you think your boiler and timer/programmer are?

A photo of the timer/programmer will help

A modern HW cylinder (depending on size and colour) will stay hot for a couple of days or until used up, and will reheat in about half an hour.

Also, a photo of your cylinder, and all the pipes and other obects around it, expecially the ones with wires attached.

and, modern CH room thermostats (the one on the wall) often include timers for the CH.