Rental property - hot water cylinder

[instantpotnoodle]

We’ve always had a combi boiler but have moved into a rental with a hot water tank/cylinder.

I want to set it up to be the most efficient but also to ensure we don’t run out of hot water. We mostly use dishwasher for dishes but needs showers in the morning for 2 adults and bath in the evening for the kids.

any ideas on how long it’ll take to heat up etc? It looks like a fairly newish system.

Most dishwashers and washing machines take in cold water only and have a heating element. We have ours set to come on for an hour before we get up and then we have showers and then it goes off after a couple of hours total so it has enough hot water for ad-hoc washing up etc. we then also have it in the early evening when our daughter likes to have a shower. During the heatwave we switched off the morning cycle as even if it is well insulated it can be a bit of a radiator and we then run off all the hot water with showers in the evening and by third shower it has often run tepid which works for us. It is a case of seeing what fits your needs and then adjusting the timing.

I love our hot water tank and it makes running a bath in winter really quick and hot compared to a combi in my experience. It also means then when the boiler went kaput we could use the immersion heater on it - not cheap (like running a giant kettle) but then we didn’t have to get an emergency plumber out as we still had hot water and could shower. We are also looking at solar and having a tank makes the conversion easier.

If our hot water is used up, it takes about half an hour to reheat the tank. Something to bear in mind if having showers in succession.