The house is Georgian and not in particularly good repair. We have no dosh atm so no point thinking lavishly, I have given up on the idea of decent insulation. No matter how many newspapers are stuffed in window gaps, up chimneys (all capped at the top so unusable except by the wind), no matter how many draught excluders we put down or fix to bits of door that don't fit well, it's not going to be a place with no draughts. I can take that; we've been here quite a few years and managed to cope with the draughts even in bad winters before. When we could afford the heating of course!
The place has gas central heating. It's a big old house and I reckon the boiler's a bit small and the hot water tank is definitely too small. 5 floors, high ceilings. There are adequate radiators except on the ground floor which is mainly not heated except for the kitchen. We have been OK with using halogen heaters in the other rooms when in use, but the halogens all had to be replaced from time to time and they all died deaths a few years ago, the light they gave off was annoying anyway; so instead of buying more of the same I persuaded dh to lay out for a couple of oil filled electric radiators. Worked pretty well last year and we'll be having to use them again this year.
Today even dh was cold so the gch has gone on.
My first question is this>
Is it cheaper to run it 24 hrs a day on lowish or to have it on twice a day at a higher temperature? We will probably have to use the electric radiators too anyway, esp if we just have the gch on low as I am disabled, pretty sedentary and get very cold which makes me more debilitated.
So now, our hot water situation.
The boiler is in the basement and we think the pipes run to the first floor where the hw tank is and then up to the 3rd floor, from where they come down floor by floor until they finally reach the kitchen. We have worked this out by timing how long it takes for the water to run hot, on each floor when we first moved in.
We are appalled at the waste of water as it sits in the pipes going cold, and all the cold water as the pipes empty of it when we are waiting for hot water in the kitchen. I am not fit enough atm to struggle with the hose and fixings to get that water into the barrel so it can be used for the garden. I almost salivated the first time I saw a qooker!
Anyway, we want one of those instant hot water things you put above a sink/bath which is plumbed into the cold feed, thus cutting the kitchen out of the hot water loop altogether. You know, one of those things that so many rented flats had over the bath which meant you either got a swimming pool temperature bath quickly, or ran the hot tap so slowly you could cook, serve, eat and clean up after a 5 course meal for 20 people while the bath ran! I don't even know what they're called!
Next month we could probably scrabble about 50 quid together, so it would need to be a cheap one. Can anyone recommend anything that's not going to be too hard to install oneself and isn't too expensive. We could wait until Jan when we might have a little more spare dosh (but not much more!).
Thank you.