Weirdly high energy Bills- faulty meter?

Dommyb

Here we go- that’s our water heater. Seems to be 1 tank. There are 2 on/off switches which we admittedly did not really understand so this is all very eye opening🤣🤣 the screen has a heater side too, but we’ve not touched this since our heaters seem to work on the on/off switch type, but if there’s a chance they could be linked to this and set on a timer that would 100% be more helpful than remembering to turn them off after a set amount of time

tim_p

Turn that top one off!  The bottom will come on and light up when the cheap rate starts. 

Robin9

An immersion heater on E7 will have two switches by it - or in the kitchen

One switch has a cable which goes to the bottom of the tank and this is the off peak circuit - this is controlled by the meter and the switch should be on. This will give you a tankful of hot water when you get up. The second switch which has a cable going to the top of the tank should normally be OFF   - only switch it on during the day if you run out of hot water.

Fred2712

Good luck with Octopus understanding you want to pay one rate when you have an EC7 meter, it took me about 3 attempts before anyone understood this request when I tried this !

Dommyb

tim_p said:

Turn that top one off!  The bottom will come on and light up when the cheap rate starts. 

Thank you!

Gerry1

Well, the upper heater is ON and costing a fortune, so turn that switch OFF right now ! !

The photo is unclear, a close up of the display would help.  Looks like you may be able to control the lower heater with it so that it's on for less than seven hours, maybe the last  two or three hours of E7 would suffice IF you stay on E7.

Ditto, it may also be controlling the panel heaters, so make sure it's not turning them on at silly times.

Dommyb

Glad we found one reason for the high bills! This is honestly sooo helpful thank you all!

Dommyb

Hey again, came back home from work to take a look at the water heater in more detail to try figure out how to best set it, I’ll try showing on pictures what we have.
Seems like the landlord did not leave us a booklet on the heater and how to set it up? Maybe a long shot but if anyone has any experience setting this sort of thing up in like with economy 7 it would really help! 

At the minute i set it at AUTO HOT WATER ADVANCE ON UNTIL 8:30. Am i on the right track? Only unsure as i cant seem to find a start time. Is 7 hours about right for heating the water or excessive? The blue light is on but the red light on the bottom switch is not so hopefully its gonna come on at night but with a 9am start time at work tomorrow I doubt i can stay up till 2am to check this🤣

Dommyb

QrizB said:

Another thought, sorry.

Dommyb said:

... to fix the time on the meter ...

It would be useful to know when your E7 times are. This might mean staying up late and checking the meter.

In the photo of your meter we can see it has five wires at the bottom. The two on the left are the "in" and the three on the right are the "out". On the "out" side there are two wires with red cable ties; one has a single cable tie, the other has two. Where do they go, can you see?

In your flat (or wherever the consumer units [fuse boxes] are), do you have one consumer unit or two? Can you post photos?

Ive attached an image of the consumer unit for you.
The cables you mentioned seem to be going upwards the cupboard, they are labelled as 843 but im not sure what this means. Will attach image too that shows this a bit better.
Our number is 15, and the buildings flats only go up to 20 i think. 

Might need to look at it in more detail tomorrow.

QrizB

Dommyb said:

Ive attached an image of the consumer unit for you.
The cables you mentioned seem to be going upwards the cupboard, they are labelled as 843 but im not sure what this means. Will attach image too that shows this a bit better.
Our number is 15, and the buildings flats only go up to 20 i think. 

Might need to look at it in more detail tomorrow.

Thanks for this.

What does the right-hand consumer unit serve? That's where I'd expect any E7-only circuits to be (if you have any) including the bottom element of your hot water tank.

Dommyb said:

Hey again, came back home from work to take a look at the water heater in more detail to try figure out how to best set it, I’ll try showing on pictures what we have.
Seems like the landlord did not leave us a booklet on the heater and how to set it up? Maybe a long shot but if anyone has any experience setting this sort of thing up in like with economy 7 it would really help! 

At the minute i set it at AUTO HOT WATER ADVANCE ON UNTIL 8:30. Am i on the right track? Only unsure as i cant seem to find a start time. Is 7 hours about right for heating the water or excessive? The blue light is on but the red light on the bottom switch is not so hopefully its gonna come on at night but with a 9am start time at work tomorrow I doubt i can stay up till 2am to check this🤣

The timer shouldn't control the bottom hot water tank element at all; that one will normally be powered direct from the E7 CU. If this is the case then you should leave the timer for the water turned off unless you need to top up the tank during the day for some reason.
If the bottom red light is lit when you wake up, it's a good sign.