Immersion timer / programmer

KTGF

Hello everyone - I'm new to the forum and I'm hoping someone out there may be able to give me some advice please.

The people that owned our house before we did must have had storage heaters at some point and were on Economy 7 tarrif (I think that's what it's called).

However, before they sold the house to us they had a gas boiler and gas central heating installed. Nevertheless, for some strange reason only known to them, they kept the water heated by the immersion.

The tank itself I believe has 2 immersions, one at the top and one at the bottom. From what I've read on t'internet the one on top is likely to be the smaller one.

Our problem is that the timer / programmer appears to be specifically for Economy 7, something that we no longer have. This means that whilst the water heats up over night (which is fine) after we have had showers in the morning there's not much hot water left for the rest of the day. Indeed, when we want to wash up later on we have to manually 'boost' it.

This in itself wouldn't be a massive problem if it weren't for the fact that for around 6 or 7 hours during the middle of the day into the early evenining we cannot 'boost' it. I'm guessing because of some sort of pre-set programme that means you can't heat water at that time of the day because it would be too expensive.

We can't afford to change the water so that it runs off the gas boiler but at the same time we would like to be able to heat the water at any given time of the day (on the undertsanding that this is probably relatively expensive in terms of bills).

Which brings me to my query - does anyone out there know what sort of timer/ programmer to install for this? The ones I have seen appear to be similar to what we already have (Economy 7) or for gas central heating & water.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

penrhyn

Any number of timers available, have a peruse of these:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?ie=UTF8&!!!!!firefox-uk-21&index=blended&link_code=qs&field-keywords=immersion%20heater%20timer&sourceid=Mozilla-search

Richie-from-the-Boro

KTGF,

- the top stat & element only heat the top [ top down ] of the cylinder and was intended for a manual 60 mins of heat
- the bottom stat & element heat the whole tank [ bottom up ] and was intended for E7 / E10 all night use

Make sure if you want more [ quantity ] hot water [ with or without a timer ] you are sending the power to the bottom element.

macman

It'll be costing you approx 2.5 times more to use the immersion heater than heat the water by gas. Rather than paying for a new timer, get the necessary plumbing work done-it'll be a good long term investment.
The immersion can be retained as a backup.

KTGF

Thanks everyone for your realy quick replies.

macman - I honestly do understand that it would be more cost effective on a monhtly basis to heat the water on the gas but unfortunately this was the legacy that we were left with. Given we don't have the resources to start all over again - new boiler, new flooring, plastering and decorating (because of piping needed) and labour - then for now we will just have to put up with what we have. To be honest, it tends to balance itself out anyway as the only thing we have on the gas during the summer is the hob, which uses next to nothing. Obviously it's dearer in winter when we out the heating on, but whose isn't? All told our bills aren't astonomical.

penrhyn - Many thanks for the link to the timers. I wasn't really sure where to start of if any timer would do, so that's really helpful.

Richie ftb - I'm so glad you've explained that because I had no clue which was which! Also the switches aren't labelled, so I'd had to follow the wires round to see where they went in anyway! I am now definitely sending power to the bottom element and looking forward to lots of hot water in the morning! Do you happen to know if I am sending power to both, whether the top tank only heats up when I hit the manual boost (i.e for an hour) or whether it also heats up overnight (in addition to the bottom one)?

Thanks again everyone :T

Richie-from-the-Boro

KTGF wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your realy quick replies.

macman - I honestly do understand that it would be more cost effective on a monhtly basis to heat the water on the gas but unfortunately this was the legacy that we were left with. Given we don't have the resources to start all over again - new boiler, new flooring, plastering and decorating (because of piping needed) and labour - then for now we will just have to put up with what we have. To be honest, it tends to balance itself out anyway as the only thing we have on the gas during the summer is the hob, which uses next to nothing. Obviously it's dearer in winter when we out the heating on, but whose isn't? All told our bills aren't astonomical.

penrhyn - Many thanks for the link to the timers. I wasn't really sure where to start of if any timer would do, so that's really helpful.

Richie ftb - I'm so glad you've explained that because I had no clue which was which! Also the switches aren't labelled, so I'd had to follow the wires round to see where they went in anyway! I am now definitely sending power to the bottom element and looking forward to lots of hot water in the morning! Do you happen to know if I am sending power to both, whether the top tank only heats up when I hit the manual boost (i.e for an hour) or whether it also heats up overnight (in addition to the bottom one)?

Thanks again everyone :T

In your situation I don't really know, what I do know you don't need a £200 quid Fluke tester to find out, a cheepo AC proximity tester will tell you .. .. which is live and .. .. which is not. It will also tell you in the very unlikely case that both are live.

TBH you can tell by just feeling the cable after 10 mins of being switched on they draw enough to noticeably warm the cable. Have you actually checked to confirm that you are deffo not on E7 cheap night time ? the "" timer / programmer"" you mention should light up after 1am and the bottom cable we talked about will have a supply which is switched on by telemetry from your leccy provider.

If your not on E7 it will cost the same to heat day / night prices so get that tank double or treble lagged, heat rises so unless you want only washing up sink quantities the booster [ top 10 or so gallons ] seems bit of a waste of money. If you switch the bottom one on when you go to bed you'll have a [ direct cylinder diagram ]full tank of hot water for the whole day you could also fit a timer for say half a tank or whatever and save having to switch it off and on.

Pincher

Have a look in the meter cupboard.

It sounds like you have a night time only circuit that only gets power when the Economy 7 clock connects it overnight. I am assuming this is connected to your bottom (main) immersion element.

The top-up (top position) immersion element is meant for day time boost, and should already be wired into an all-day circuit. The top-up element doesn't try to heat the whole cyclinder because you sometimes only want a little bit of hot water.

http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/SMTGBT4.html

I love these count down timers. Don't have to remember to switch anything off. On days you don't wash dishes, nothing is heated. If you do, a 15 minute boost with one click sorts it. For a shower, I would click it three times to get one hour, and start the shower about 30 minutes into the hour. It's like having an electric shower, but you heated some of the water earlier. I was living for a whole summer without a working gas boiler, and just hit this boost button to get hot water, no hardship at all.

macman

Why would you need to change your boiler in order to get it to feed the hot water tank?

KTGF

Richie FTB really helpful answer once again - I had a look at the diagrams you linked for me and also at the other posts on the subject and I am confident now that we have a direct cylinder. I have switched off the top part completely so there is no feed as having the bottom one heat overnight for a couple of hours has given us all the hot water we need for the day :T Based on this I would think it very unlikely that we would ever now need to use the boost function which from what you and other people have said, would seem to heat only the top part for an hour. Enough to do a bit of washing up etc.

I've looked into timers and found a couple of examples that we could go with which would give us more options for different programmes. These would be really helpful should our situation or needs ever change.

As regards the issue of Economy 7, thanks to everyone again for their comments on this but I can categorically confirm that we are not on Economy 7. We were when we first moved into the house, even though, as I say, the previous onwers had already removed all the storage heaters. We discussed it with the electric company who came and changed the metre and we are in fact now on a 'normal' tariff. I understand that heating the water over night is therefore no cheaper, but we have continued to do this only because we get up very early in the morning and have showers so it's convenient for us.

The trouble we have had is that the programmer is one designed specifically for Economy 7. It only allows for one programmed setting (i.e. to come on once and then to go off). It also appears to have some in-built override that will not allow us to have it come on either programmed or boost settings at certain times of the day. When this happens a light comes on underneath the words 'Off Peak'. I assume this is because ti woudl be more expensive at that time (if indeed we were on Ecoomy 7!)

I am now quite sure that once we install a new timer / programmer, that is designed just for immersion heaters, and not specifically for Economy 7 tariff, that we will be able to heat the water whenever we want durting the day and also have more than one programmed setting, which will give us more flexibility.

I note everyone's comments on the lagging and I can tell you that the cylinder looks to be extremely well insulated and there doesn't appear to be any heat loss in the water at the very end of the day, so it appears to be working well.

macman - about changing the boiler, we had someone come out and look at everything when we first moved in and he told us that in order to feed the the hot water tank we would be best advised to relocate the boiler, however given that the boiler was not the best and 'getting on' he was concerned that if he moved it, it may very well break down shortly thereafter and need replacing. I do wonder whether he was being genuine, but there again if he wasn't he was talking himself out of a job as we told him categorically from the beginning that we couldn't afford a new boiler - unless of course he wasn't interested!

In any event, as I say, over the course of the year our bills don't appear to work out much dearer, if any, than the people we know with the water heated by gas. Perhaps if we planned to stay here for a longer period (this is our first house) then we may certainly consider this option, but in the medium term if we can get the water heated to our liking and we can afford our monthly bills then we have other things we need to look at spending our money on...!

Many thanks again to everyone who took the time to help us with this query :beer:

Richie-from-the-Boro

KTGF

Its very likely you will have a [ not all but most older installs used these ] Horstmann electric water heating control unit, this one being the cheapest bog standard originally fitted in most cases, though it may have been upgraded to a digital one over time to a more modern one like this. At the end of the day changing current unit to new timer is a doddle of a job any sparky can do, but it seems you are able to access overnight leccy with what you have so I don't see the benefit in the cost of installing a new timer.

Hope this helps

Swipe

I agree with the above post. If it's a Horstmann digital timer you need to download the manual and read the instructions. It definitely is doable but it may just currently set with the timed boost configured incorrectly.