Electricity help

coffeehound

steph_87 said:

Over December they must have been on over night due to the snow and the ice and I had been none the wiser.  I only noticed yesterday as I had been working from home.

I've disabled  the function on my heaters and guess what? No spike of 7kw of energy at 5am/6am.  Just my water boiler and now I've woke up to £1.36 of energy rather than £5. 

Glad you've solved it.  I'm sure these 'intelligent' functions often do more harm than good.

Robin9

Good that you found the problem - some things are just too clever -  what was wrong with the on/off switch 1

k_man

There is likely to be a side effect that it doesn't feel as warm as it did, as the heating us not on for as long.

But should indeed reduce the bills.

Gerry1

This illustrates why it's so important to understand exactly how these relatively smart devices work.  If you just use the default settings or allow someone else to set them up they may not do what's best for you.

Exactly the same with High Heat Retention NSHs, especially if they have the 'cheapskate' solution of using only one supply (probably an E7 circuit rewired to be 24h).  The default settings may well not be appropriate for your meter, or even for the UK if they're German products.

Same for Look After My Bills, BillBuddy etc, there's no substitute for proper understanding and doing it all yourself.  It's not that difficult and you can always get help from this forum.

EssexHebridean

Oh Steph I'm so pleased you've found the culprit - you must be so relieved! It really demonstrates how well the "hive mind" of knowledge on here can work! 

Completely agree with Gerry's comment that doing things yourself and building your knowledge about stuff like this too - the difference we found in the comfort of living with NSH's when we finally REALLY learned how best to use them was incredible - and I'd say we're still learning as time goes on too - partly from threads on here, and partly just from experience. 

coffeehound

Gerry1 said:

This illustrates why it's so important to understand exactly how these relatively smart devices work.  If you just use the default settings or allow someone else to set them up they may not do what's best for you.

I think the fault lies to a large extent with the engineers who design the appliances, in that they have unrealistic expectations for how much time/effort/courage joe public has to read through complicated, intimidating instruction manuals.  As is often shown on here, even the installers often don't understand how the things work!  

Gerry1

coffeehound said:

Gerry1 said:

This illustrates why it's so important to understand exactly how these relatively smart devices work.  If you just use the default settings or allow someone else to set them up they may not do what's best for you.

I think the fault lies to a large extent with the engineers who design the appliances, in that they have unrealistic expectations for how much time/effort/courage joe public has to read through complicated, intimidating instruction manuals.  As is often shown on here, even the installers often don't understand how the things work!  

If the User Interface were any good, it wouldn't need an instruction manual !

coffeehound

Gerry1 said:

If the User Interface were any good, it wouldn't need an instruction manual !

Exactly so.  Manfs need to work more with UI/UX (user interface / user experience) designers to make advanced controls more user-friendly

MWT

coffeehound said:

I think the fault lies to a large extent with the engineers who design the appliances, in that they have unrealistic expectations for how much time/effort/courage joe public has to read through complicated, intimidating instruction manuals.  As is often shown on here, even the installers often don't understand how the things work!  

They are mostly designed for professional installation, but I agree, it does seem like a lot of the professionals have not kept pace with the changes in technology so they do not always get set correctly in the first place sadly.

Gerry1 said:

If the User Interface were any good, it wouldn't need an instruction manual !

I agree on things like setting the on/off schedules and temperatures, that really should be intuitive.

Not sure I'd want all the 'installer' level options exposed though as it can be easy to make mistakes with significant consequences if people are not prepared to read the technical manual for that level of parameter setting.

Gerry1

MWT said:

I agree on things like setting the on/off schedules and temperatures, that really should be intuitive.

Not sure I'd want all the 'installer' level options exposed though as it can be easy to make mistakes with significant consequences if people are not prepared to read the technical manual for that level of parameter setting.

Agreed, I was only referring to the 'User' User Instructions, not the more detailed ones the installer needs.