By Beryl Ann

13 May 2008 18:31

Would it be cheaper to have an immersion heater on for hot water rather than an oil boiler running twice a day?

What is this?

 

Yours Expert Answer

By Energy Switching Expert

Cut your energy bills and improve your home's water heating efficiency with advice from Yours Switching and Energy Helpline expert Mark Todd.

The cheapest way to heat water is to use a modern gas boiler. I say modern as you can get modern boilers that only use 60% of the gas of a traditional boiler. Oil and immersion heaters are both expensive ways of heating water however if you do not have mains gas they are probably your only options.

The average cost of heating a home with oil is £1,265 according to price comparison service boilerjuice.com. So the question is would using an electric immersion heater be cheaper.  To calculate the cost, what you need to do is found out the wattage of your electric immersion heating. A typical one is 3kW. That means it use 3 units or kW per hour of electricity to heat water. Have this on 2 hours a day it would use 6 units costing you about 78p per day (electricity costs about 13p per unit) or £285 a year to heat your water.  If you can find out the wattage of your immersion heater you could then do a similar sum. My estimate is that it is cheaper to use an electric immersion heater for water. To make it even cheaper you may want to fit an electric shower and then only put the immersion heater on for one hour per day rather than twice. That’s what we do in our house (I have an immersion heater too, funnily enough). You can also switch your electricity to get rates as low as 10p per unit using the Yours Switching Service – this will save further.

Additional information

http://www.energyhelpline.com/yours