How to heat water in electric only flat?

Posted by AdFancy3904@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 94 comments

My partner and I just moved into an electric only flat in London. We have an unvented water cylinder (130L). The paper manual says 'where applicable, it includes a 3kw electric immersion heater' - so I assume we have this. Our problem is, we currently have it on a timed setting which turns it on for 1hr every morning. We get a shower each, which goes cold at the end of the second shower. These showers are no more than 5 ish minutes. We therefore have no hot water for dish washing. How long are we supposed to have this hot water on? I receive conflicting answers by googling. I've changed it to 2 hours starting tomorrow morning, but another question I have is that if during these 2hrs the cylinder has heated up, is there some sort of control that stops this running? We do not want to spend an absolute fortune in electric each month, but also, we pay 2000 p/m in rent we should be able to wash our dishes in hot water! I've got no clue how this works as we have just moved from a dual energy home. Any tips on living in an electric-only flat are also grateful but we need to be able to figure out the hot water :/