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Shower or bath?

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Mike0001 said:
That's £60/£180 a year just for washing. Include your water costs and that is £180/£540 a year just for one person.
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My figures include the water cost. Call me dirty if you like, but I have never seen the need to shower every day - hellfire, when I was growing up bath night was once a week! Neither am I at home all the time, so the cost gets moved elsewhere. I reckon £40pa covers it.

The washing machine costs far more.
 
Ezra Pound said:
To be fair the top boiler for central heating efficiency is not the top performer for domestic hot water, however if you average out the efficiencies of all 5404 boilers you get figures of 82.9% for central heating and 54.72% for domestic hot water
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Perhaps it's best to heat your home to bath temperature, then, and make the most of an 88% efficient home heating boiler. :p
 
Black Hole said:
My figures include the water cost. Call me dirty if you like, but I have never seen the need to shower every day - hellfire, when I was growing up bath night was once a week! Neither am I at home all the time, so the cost gets moved elsewhere. I reckon £40pa covers it.

The washing machine costs far more.
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I bet it does, if you wash so infrequently! :p

However, joking apart, this is another story. On a standard 40 degree program, washing machines use between 33l and 72l of water, depending on make and model. Energy use varies from 2p to 5p per kg, or 1kWh to 2.5kWh per full load.
 
Do they still have what use to be called what used to be Economy 7 or 'white meter' off peak electrify? that would help
 
Ezra Pound said:
Do they still have what use to be called what used to be Economy 7 or 'white meter' off peak electrify? that would help
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I believe they do, but of course you will usually pay a higher standing charge and possibly higher daytime rates as well. If it's not used for storage heating, or other fairly heavy night-time consumption the economics may be a bit marginal.
It's like solar power - it looks good, but the numbers don't add up to a good deal. (As yet anyway :) )
 
On a quick check uSwitch still seem to be offering Economy7.

Presumably your relative wasn't using the nsh any more.
 
I guess the with smart meters (not that I have either a smart electric or gas meter fitted yet) there would be no need for a second 'white' meter any more, they could just charge you a different rate at night. I did some calculations some years ago when you could get off peak electricity and the figures were in my favour (taking into consideration the higher daytime rate), just by moving all washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher usage to the night, but you would have to stick to it strictly, my plan was to fit a timed ring main so that the appliances would only work at night. However it never got past the planning stage
 
Ezra Pound said:
I guess the with smart meters (not that I have either a smart electric or gas meter fitted yet) there would be no need for a second 'white' meter any more, they could just charge you a different rate at night. I did some calculations some years ago when you could get off peak electricity and the figures were in my favour (taking into consideration the higher daytime rate), just by moving all washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher usage to the night, but you would have to stick to it strictly, my plan was to fit a timed ring main so that the appliances would only work at night. However it never got past the planning stage
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You are correct, we are on econo7 with the new "smart meter" , it just records two separate readings.
The idea to fit timers for appliances to work at night wont work now , most modern appliances have electronic on/off switching and wont respond to an external timer, mainly for safety reasons. I am an early riser so I can make good use of the "low rate" supply, but if I didn't econ 7 would not be economical.
 
A few random thoughts I've had on the subject (while in the shower):

Some time ago I came up with an idea to integrate a heat exchanger into the shower tray, so that heat in the waste water that goes down the plug hole can be recovered into the supply water for the shower.

It would not be that difficult (for somebody of a technical bent) to rig up a usage meter roughly calibrated in cost, particularly if the shower is electric.

How much is gym membership? Anybody into fitness can offset the cost of showering at home against their gym fees.
 
my plan was to fit a timed ring main so that the appliances would only work at night.


Not sure that would work with modern appliances. Our washing machine is 'electronic' and after setting it up you have to press a non-latching start button. So you might have to get specific appliances.
(Edit. Too slow typing ... beaten to it above)

And for us it would also need so many changes to the domestic routine it would be easier to train the cats to do the laundry.
 
Black Hole said:
Some time ago I came up with an idea to integrate a heat exchanger into the shower tray, so that heat in the waste water that goes down the plug hole can be recovered into the supply water for the shower.
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I used to work in energy efficiency and you'd be surprised how difficult it is to recover waste heat. Even on continuous processes the payback on capital can be quite marginal, and for maybe 15-30 mins a day I doubt it would ever be worth it. And in this case you've also got the problem of keeping the drain side of the exchanger clean.
 
Black Hole said:
A few random thoughts I've had on the subject (while in the shower):

Some time ago I came up with an idea to integrate a heat exchanger into the shower tray, so that heat in the waste water that goes down the plug hole can be recovered into the supply water for the shower.

It would not be that difficult (for somebody of a technical bent) to rig up a usage meter roughly calibrated in cost, particularly if the shower is electric.

How much is gym membership? Anybody into fitness can offset the cost of showering at home against their gym membership.
Click to expand...


You can recover the waste heat from domestic use both water and ventilation , but its a system built into new houses whilst building them, fitting it retrogressively would I think be extremely expensive at the moment.
 
Black Hole said:
It would not be that difficult (for somebody of a technical bent) to rig up a usage meter roughly calibrated in cost, particularly if the shower is electric.
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I once saw a shower head with integrated LEDs that would flash after a certain amount of time had elapsed.
 
Black Hole said:
Great. Then you have the additional cost of batteries to run the LEDs!
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I remember that (or similar) from a few years ago. I think it had a little impeller/generator to power it. Not sure how long it would last in a hard water area though ...
 
MikeSh said:
Not sure that would work with modern appliances. Our washing machine is 'electronic' and after setting it up you have to press a non-latching start button. So you might have to get specific appliances.
And for us it would also need so many changes to the domestic routine it would be easier to train the cats to do the laundry.
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At the time (it was some years ago) the washing machine and dishwasher could be primed to work whenever the timed ring main was active, but the tumble dryer had a mechanical 'clock' timer which would require real time activation, that wasn't really a problem as someone would be around at the start of off peak time to manually turn things on. The reason it never got past the planning stage was due to the "changes to the domestic routine", the cat refused to participate :) "
 
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