Help for hot water options

[dasachmo]

Hi everyone.
Wonder if I can call on everyone's wisdom about our boiler.
My elderly parents medway super kitchen boilers given up and we have to get a new one.
The kitchen was added to the house long ago and rather then add pipework and plub to the house boiler.. we have a gas water heater that supplies a kitchen tap and bathroom tap. It did supply the shower but that's been replaced with an electric one instead .

What's the best option to have this replaced as we have no hot water from taps.
I don't think there's space on our fuse board for an electric boiler but the hot water tap use is infrequent but it's still needed especially with winter coming up.

Just concerned replacing it with another gas boiler means a new flue and a lot of work and limited use.

 

[ericmark]

There are electric under sink water heaters down to 1 kW, where they have a small store of water, around 7 litres, these can be powered from a 13 amp outlet. I used one for years in my caravan, the down side was loss of cupboard space, it came as 3 kW but I swapped element for 1 kW as whole caravan only on 10 amp.

I never ran out of hot water, but with a caravan had to carry all water, so did not use much.

I hope plumbers can tell you, and for that matter me more. The one I had used a special tap, the tap controlled water into the heater, and the bit that looked like the tap was only a spout, water going in forced water out.

The new ones seem to vary in size 5 to 15 litres. A quick google came up with this 2 kW version I also have a problem, my pipe work is too long, and to get hot water I have to run a lot off, but heating water is in summer at least free, the solar panels do it, in winter the oil central heating does it, I have three outlets used, and clearly these things only serve one outlet, but the size puts me off, it all depends if over or under sink, and we have a window behind sink so can't be over the sink. Gas water boilers are still made, but the price is silly, what I tend to do, is boil a cup of water to take chill off, these are fast, it takes 60 seconds to boil a cup of water, and 60 seconds to run off the cold water, so makes no never mind which one does. And is fitting a local boiler worth it to save 60 seconds?

 

[dasachmo]

Thank you for such a comprehensive reply! Ericmark. I think though I will probably have to get one fitted, as I'm sure during the colder months the normal tap water will just be untouchable with how cold it is! We're currently just using a kettle but not sure if it's worth getting a 10l one which just keeps the water hot all day (as its a waste) or an instant one which seems a bit more economical as we're not going to use that water overnight etc