Richard Cranton
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- Joined
- Nov 21, 2019
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Hi TEF,
My first posting so will try and observe all rules of the Forum.
My dear old Mum was complaining that her hot water was too hot a few days ago. On checking the airing cupboard I noticed that the neon light on the immersion heater switch was on which I've never noticed before. Initially I considered there might be an overall timing problem with her Economy 7 but I've since ruled that out as her Smart display is only showing a few watts being drawn and if the storage heaters were on you would expect to see it drawing several Kwh (I'd manually switched off the hot water at this point). So I think the problem is isolated to the hot water circuit. The tank does have the usual two heaters but the top boost immersion is not working so currently switched off. For now I've managed to overcome the problem by dropping the temperature on the stat so it doesn't get too hot / use too much leccy. There are a couple of time clocks in the kitchen that control the storage heater boosters / towel rails / bedroom heater etc. I've switched these off but hot water heater still on. The garage has numerous consumer units. One with 4 fuses for storage heaters, second has eight fuses for the boosters, bedroom heaters, towel rail and control unit?. The third is the standard domestic CU for ring main, lights etc then the fourth is a single unit marked immersion heater and does control the immersion heater. There is also a box marked Contactors Zone 1 & 2. Inside this box there are two Eberle type 490 40 contactors. I have no idea what these do but seem to be some sort of switch gear.
She has recently had a smart meter installed but I'm not sure that's the cause of the problem.
I would like to get to the bottom of this as I don't really like leaving the immersion on all the time.
Questions - What is the purpose of the two contactors and are they linked to the fuse marked control unit? Should the hot water circuit be controlled by the off peak time clock which I assume Is contained in the new smart meter. It has Rate 1 / Rate 2 functionality.
At the moment the quick cheap solution would be to site a new time clock between the switch and the immersion but I would rather understand what has gone wrong. Photos of the CU's, contactors available if it would help.
Any assistance much appreciated.
Richard
My first posting so will try and observe all rules of the Forum.
My dear old Mum was complaining that her hot water was too hot a few days ago. On checking the airing cupboard I noticed that the neon light on the immersion heater switch was on which I've never noticed before. Initially I considered there might be an overall timing problem with her Economy 7 but I've since ruled that out as her Smart display is only showing a few watts being drawn and if the storage heaters were on you would expect to see it drawing several Kwh (I'd manually switched off the hot water at this point). So I think the problem is isolated to the hot water circuit. The tank does have the usual two heaters but the top boost immersion is not working so currently switched off. For now I've managed to overcome the problem by dropping the temperature on the stat so it doesn't get too hot / use too much leccy. There are a couple of time clocks in the kitchen that control the storage heater boosters / towel rails / bedroom heater etc. I've switched these off but hot water heater still on. The garage has numerous consumer units. One with 4 fuses for storage heaters, second has eight fuses for the boosters, bedroom heaters, towel rail and control unit?. The third is the standard domestic CU for ring main, lights etc then the fourth is a single unit marked immersion heater and does control the immersion heater. There is also a box marked Contactors Zone 1 & 2. Inside this box there are two Eberle type 490 40 contactors. I have no idea what these do but seem to be some sort of switch gear.
She has recently had a smart meter installed but I'm not sure that's the cause of the problem.
I would like to get to the bottom of this as I don't really like leaving the immersion on all the time.
Questions - What is the purpose of the two contactors and are they linked to the fuse marked control unit? Should the hot water circuit be controlled by the off peak time clock which I assume Is contained in the new smart meter. It has Rate 1 / Rate 2 functionality.
At the moment the quick cheap solution would be to site a new time clock between the switch and the immersion but I would rather understand what has gone wrong. Photos of the CU's, contactors available if it would help.
Any assistance much appreciated.
Richard