Electric storage heaters

elpopo

Hi

I am on economy 7 and have storage heaters in 3 of my rooms.

There is the big main one in the living room that has 2 wall switches next to it. One i assume is to switch it on so can have heat at any time (the fused one) and the other so that it can be on to heat overnight.

The ones in the other room have just one wall switch next to it (with no fuse on it).

I'm a bit confused about the wall switches in the other rooms. Do these have to be on as well as the switch next to the main one for the overnight storage of the heat to work or are these switches to put the heat on instantly also and do they usually work completely separate to the main heater? have been having these on and haven't been thinking about it but now i'm a bit worried that all i've been doing is leaving on the heating all day so now i've just turned it all off.

Hope you can help and hope this made sense.

They are Robinson Willey Storage heaters model RW/49

Swipe

The ones in the other rooms with no fuses will be wired into the overnight E7 circuit. I'd put those back on otherwise you'll be freezing tomorrow. It sounds like the switch is just for the main heater. You could of course check this by taking meter readings. If you know what capacity your main heater is i.e. 2KW you could take a meter reading, flip the switch for 15 min and then take a reading again. Multiply the difference by 4 and you will then know how much usage would have taken place over an hour. If the result matches or is less than the capacity of the heater you can be sure that is the only heater affected by the boost switch. If it is higher then you know that it also boosts all the other heaters (unlikely IMO)

elpopo

Thanks for that. I wont be able to get into the meter room til tomorrow as my flatmate has the key but i'll try it.

I think with the ones in the other room what concerns me is that if they haven't had the switch on next to it then i turn on the switch they get hot, and not knowing if its them coming on with instant heat or just outputting the heat they have stored from the night. Then when i turn the switch again they cool down.

As last night i had turned the switches off and today thought i'd try to see what happens if i put the one on in the hallway and it got hot. So wondering if when the main switch is on all of the heaters store heat no matter if the switch next to the smaller ones is on or not.

Swipe

If that is the case then maybe that boost switch does turn all of them on then. I'd use that sparingly if it is so otherwise it could prove quite expensive.

Fire_Fox

Have you asked your landlord how the system works?