mneary

You use electricity to heat water?

Nigel Goodwin

It's a very common method, usually using an element in an insulated copper tank, the copper tank also normally has the option of being heated from the central heating system, or (in the VERY old days) from a 'back boiler' mounted behind a coal fire.

I used such a system until late 2006, when it was all ripped out and a gas combi-boiler fitted.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

mneary

I had an electric water heater briefly in 1974, ripped it out and replaced with gas as soon as I got my second electric bill.

Nigel Goodwin

What were you doing with it?, mine was on 24/7 for 25 years, and I never had big bills. I only took it out because the element failed (insulation breakdown, blowing the earth leakage trip). I did buy a new element to try and replace it, but I couldn't get the old element out (I was scared the tank would rip), so we decided to replace the old (pretty crappy) gas central heating totally.

While waiting for the job to be done I borrowed three 1KW isolation transformers from work, wired them in parallel, and fed the immersion from them this stopped the trip blowing, and worked fine.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

mneary

In 1974, US electric rates were about three times as high as gas, per BTU. We were spending about $30 per month (1974 dollars) just to heat the water.

I calculated that the gas unit paid for itself within the first year.