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Do You Need a Direct Cylinder or an Indirect Cylinder?
Direct or Indirect Cylinder?
This is a pretty fundamental choice, so it is a question you need to be 100% sure about. Luckily, it’s not difficult once you understand it.
A Direct cylinder is a hot water cylinder which contains one or more electric elements which are used to heat the water. These cylinders are for hot water only (i.e. not heating) and are completely self contained (i.e. they are not connected to another boiler).
An INDIRECT cylinder heats the water by an external boiler (for example, a gas boiler) which heats the water inside a coil which then (indirectly) heats the water in the cylinder.
As well as heating the water, the contents of the coil is also often pumped to radiators to provide the central heating.
Usually, there is also a single electrical element in an indirect cylinder, which is used as a back-up (or top-up) for the external boiler. If you’d like to understand any of this in more detail, the Advice Centre articles on the right hand side may be interesting.
Some of our favourite Direct Cylinders: