OSO water heater- help?

rattters

My brother lives in a small 1 bed flat and is having to put about £6 a day in his pre payment meter.

He uses 1 lamp in living room, microwaves his meals and has no computer, 1 TV on about 3 hours in the evening.

He has an OSO unvented water heater Direct 20RD . The landlady has no idea how to set the timings for this!!! there is a timer- but no idea how to work it!

He flicks red switch to turn it on when he gets home from work for about 3 hours and gets heating and hot water from this. He switches it off when he goes to bed.

Question- his meter is on economy 7- can this system be charged up at night to save on electricity?

Any suggestions greatly welcomed!

macman

If he is on E7, then heating it in peak rate hours is why it is costing so much.using it on E7 cheap arte will be about a thirtd of the cost.
Tell the landlord to find out-it's their job to tell the tenant.

rattters

Cheers macman- yeah- thats what I have told him! He just can't work out how to set the system to come on at night - landlady not very helpful at all!!!

macman

Post make and model of the timer, or picture, and someone can advise.

Canucklehead

Hi.

Just curious how you get c/h from an unvented cylinder?

Or is it an electric boiler such as Amptec.


GSR

rattters

ah- will wait for him to get home and get required details.

rattters

Right- please forgive me if any of this is senseless!!!!!

There is a large white cylinder that says "Oso unvented water heater, Direct 20 RD"
Above that are 2 red smaller cylinders
Behind the boiler is a Box the shape of a fireblanket holder?? Which says "Amptec Boiler C900"
The timer is a Timeguard ETU8000
there is also a thermostat "Centaurstat" in the hallway

Being complete numpty's that we are we can't figure it out.
(My brother lives darn sarf so I don't actually have access to it!)

As mentioned he switches the red switch and he gets heat and hot water (the hot water is scalding hot btw)

He turns it on for about 3-4 hours in the evening

He has normal looking radiators that are plumbed in with pipes that go under the floor and thermostats

Would it be the sort of system that once he has worked out the timer that would be best to have on at night and then has hot water all day until the tank runs out and the radiators discharge their heat in a similar way to night storage heaters?

Any advice so warmly welcome

HappyMJ

C900 means 9kw...4 hours on maximum will use 36kWh. At peak day rates of 15p/Kwh that'll cost £5.40 per day plus his normal usage plus any standing charge means his daily bill will be around £7 to £8 per day quite easily.

He needs to switch to a standard electricity tariff as it is very unlikely that he will be using anywhere near 30% at night to benefit from an E7 tariff.

rattters

Cheers happyMJ

Would I be right in asuming he has 2 boilers- the Oso one heating his hot water and the Amptec one heating his radiators?

:huh:

HappyMJ

rattters wrote: »

Cheers happyMJ

Would I be right in asuming he has 2 boilers- the Oso one heating his hot water and the Amptec one heating his radiators?

:huh:

Boiler isn't really the right word. It's a water heater. The cylinder is highly likely to have one or two 3kW immersion heaters in it. However, there should be a seperate switch for each immersion heater and for the Amptec heater rather than just the one switch for all. The water won't cost that much to keep warm. That is part of his normal day-to-day usage. The heat loss from a 100 litre 20RD cylinder is 55W. About the same as an incandescent light bulb.

edit: if the hot water is scalding then he can open up the immersion heater and turn them down to 55-60 degrees C to see if that helps. The downside to doing that is that you could run out of hot water sooner as you need to use more hot water and less cold water when mixing the water to have a shower. You can set it as low as 50C but you might want to find a thermometer to check the actual temperature of the water at a tap to see if the thermostat is accurate. Legionaire bacteria will only be killed with water temperatures higher than 50C. The higher termperature then the quicker any existing bacteria will be killed. You only need to raise the temperature above 50C once a week so you could fit a 7 day timer on the secondary immersion heater to do that and keep the primary immersion heater set on a lower temperature.

rattters

I see- so he could just run the hot water one for an hour or so?
Also- from googling these appliances- doesn't the Amptec also act as a hot water heater? Why does he need 2 appliances?

Sorry for all the questions:o