Electric consumption extrememly high - very concerned.

Surfer

We have recently moved into premises that has storage heaters and hot water boiler all on economy 7 and the metering has a radio teleswitch. We have not been given instructions on how to use the storage heaters.
Anyway on moving in I took readings of both dials and then again today which is 5 days later and to my horror I found out that we are using 48 units a day normal and off peak 21 units. This equates to £48 worth of electric during the 5 days and £5 during the 5 nights off peak.
This totally freaked me out as in essence this means an electric bill of £216 for a month for a 1 bedroom bungalow with two people. I am home all day but there is no electric fire or anything and all I use is the computer and a 100w light. Our day consumption should be around 9 units a day as the hot water is heated up between 12am and 7am.
Now that I have bored you with the background, the question is should we be using so much electric during the day and is it possible that the storage heaters are switching on during the day even though they are supposed to be controlled with a radio teleswitch which is supposed to regulate the timing?
I checked the meter and the dial was spinning fast so I switched off the two storage heaters that were on and the dial nearly came to a standstill. Any thoughts on this please?

Cardew

Well it is almost certain that your storage heaters and possibly Hot water are coming on during the day.

Many(but not all) storage heaters and immersion heaters were wired so that they only came on when the supply switched to off-peak E7 electricity.(the immersion usually had an overide if you ran out of Hot Water during the day)

As this isn't the case with your heaters, there must be a timer mechanism somewhere that allows you to set them so they only receive electricity during the E7 period.

spaceboy

Could be that the timer isnt set to the correct time.

dogshome

Hi surfer - 48 Units on Day rate, even in winter is so far off the scale it's unbelievable. At the same time, using only 21 units on Night rate is far too low - Each of your night storage heaters is probably rated at 2.5Kw, which means that over 7 hours each one will burn 17.5 units - How many do you have?

It seems that your readings of Day/Night are reversed, but check with your supplier because they often make the same mistake.

However, this leaves you burning 21Kw on day rate, which is more than double what should be expected - CHECK the hot water cylinder and make sure the controls are set to produce hot water only overnight and the daytime booster is inactive
Good Luck.

dee999_2

our latest scottish hydro electric bill for dec-march is 27 units a day for our heating (2470 units for 103 days!) we have storage heaters too (2 on low out of 8, and we only put the heaters on on 1st dec!))- 2 adults who work shifts in the house, 2 small baths a day, washing machine on at night (30 dgrees)- and our bill is £150 plus vat.........just for the heating!(we dont ever use the boost button on the heaters either)
i have always believed our heaters use a horrendous amount of electric.....compared to other residents in our street (who have all 8 heaters on full blast, and dont think the bills are bad?)- our quarterly bill this month is £327 inc standard electric (which i dont grudge, as i use the tumble dryer 3-4 times a week in winter for an hour a day)
our meter was proven to be faulty, and a new one was fitted 3 years ago (it had been charging us 600% more than it should have been!)-