Summer can be free

Can we forget about being energy efficient for a while, as it is now warmer?
Unfortunately with many homes, you still need to heat at least one radiator in order to get hot water from your boiler. What is worse is the cylinder does not tell the boiler that its water has reached the desired temperature, so the boiler fires away for the period set on the timer, wasting costly fuel.

Ah, you don't use the boiler in summer, but switch on the immersion heater instead?
In fact, using the boiler would be cheaper. When comparing the cost of fuels to the amount that is required to do the same job, electricity is more than twice the price of any other heating solution, per unit of measurement, and produces more carbon dioxide as well. The fact that we often forget to switch off the immersion and leave it running for a couple of hours compounds this expense dramatically.

Am I being flippant? Well, yes, and I am using it to drive home the point that we often do things out of habit or because its the way we grew up doing it and don't consider any other way unless it is pointed out clearly to us.

The solution:
Add a cylinder thermostat (cylinder-stat) onto the hot water cylinder to measure it's temperature and then seperate out between heating the rads and the hot water (zoning). This is a fairly simple procedure. With this in place you will only heat the hot water in summer. What's more important is the cylinder will tell the boiler to stop working, even though the programmable timer may be set to run for longer.

If it suites your lifestyle, solar panels would now be giving you free hot water and there would be no need to use either the boiler or electricity to boost the heat. Solar panels are fantastic value for money and have the shortest payback period of all renewable energy products - if you use stored hot water.
Examples of using stored hot water would be if you use the bath regularly or have showers that are not electric power showers.
The more you use stored hot water, the bigger the savings, for example a family of four would benefit more from solar panels than an elderly couple, purely by the way they use hot water. Children tend to bath more when young and teenagers are forever in and out of the shower, often for lengthy periods.

Think about how you use your home and what you are using to provide heat to the various components. This will help you identify where the cost savings can be made most effectively and the order they should be tackled in. Ecodev provides energy efficiency advise based on your particular situation, such as family needs, the materials your home is constructed from, your budget, etc.

While on the subject of water storage...removing the lagging jacket from the hot water cylinder, to dry the clothes in the hot press, is an expensive route to take. If you upgrade to solar panels and the associated dual-coil cylinder (or even just installing a factory insulated hot water cylinder as part of boiler upgrades) consider putting in a small radiator in the hotpress at the same time. This will do a better job of drying the clothes, when you can't hang them outside, and be much cheaper on the pocket in the long run.