Hot water heating by immersion or using boiler?

[nicholab]

Hi any thought is it worth heating the hot water during the summer by the immersion heater?

 

So I have a long run from the house to the garage which is feed by an oil fired boiler. I now wondering if it is worth using the immersion heater it might cost more but it will not heat the pipes to the house or use the pump. So I think it might cost less in total.

[Andrew_C]

Quite possibly, but too many variables to work it out without much more data.

[mavhc]

Lots of spare electricity from your solar panels in summer, so yeah, use those. Trick is to just heat as much as you need, keeping it hot wastes a lot of power and dumps extra heat into your house

[3s-gtech]

So you have a hot water supply in the garage, and you're wondering about how to efficiently use that? Or your boiler is in the garage and feeds your tank from there?

[nicholab]

The boiler is in the garage and feeds the hot water tank in the house.

 

We not quite move to solar cells and a heat pump yet.

[Theblacksheep]

cheap electricity at night helps, that's when I run the heatpump for hotwater generation and the immersion for weekly 60c flush.

[3s-gtech]

Immersion heaters are pretty brutal cost wise - it's basically a giant kettle element with associated costs.

 

My first port of call would be to better insulate the pipe runs, if possible, and look at further lagging for the tank. Cheap and cheerful.

[steveg]

How much do you pay per kwh of oil, and how efficient is the boiler?

 

Immersion is near 100% efficient (ignoring heat loss from tank which is the same for both) but price of electric is likely higher than oil. I pay about 5 times more per unit for electric than gas at the moment. Even if electric is twice as efficient, it makes sense for me to use gas cost wise.