E7 Fusebox

molerat

Glad you correctly put inverted commas in that statement !

GibbsRule_No3.

Took the chance turned it to on. Then looked under the lids of the other two boxes, the white one to the right of the red dial and the one below. Both looked like they were also off, so I pushed them up to see “on” and will be interesting to see IF the E7 does come on tonight.  Part of me hopes that it will be the solution, the other part of me will be fuming, that they did not turn them on themselves.

[Deleted User]

The big red dial is a cut off switch for the solar panels and th box below with the hinged lid and the stickers is what connects your solar panels to the grid. It's normal for them both to be switched off when working on the meters etc. but they should certainly have switched them back on. The other white box is probably for something like the electrics in your garage or maybe you have an electric shower that was added after the house was built?

lohr500

On your main fuse box there are four breakers labelled Bathroom Heater, Kitchen Heater, Bedroom Heater and Small Hall Heater.

Then on the Eco7 fuse box there are four storage heater breakers labelled Kitchen, Lounge Small, Lounge Large and Bedroom. 

So there is a mismatch of the labelling.

Each Quantum should have a permanent high current live supply from the main fuse box and a secondary lower current supply from the Eco7 fuse box.

Is the bathroom heater a conventional non Eco 7 type heater. If so, I suspect you are correct and they have yet to add a breaker in the main fuse box for the large Lounge storage heater.

The other thing that is puzzling me is why your off peak water heating isn't working. The Eco 7 main breaker appears to be switched on, as is the Eco 7 breaker for the water heater.  I take it the smart meter was installed previously and isn't new at this point in time? If it isn't a new install then the chances are that the smart meter is working correctly and energising the Eco7 fuse box during the off peak times using what is known as the "fifth wire" coming out of the bottom of the smart meter.

As per FFHillbilly's suggestion you could try pressing one of the test buttons (marked with a T) on the Eco 7 breakers at a time when you know you should be getting off peak rates. If nothing happens, then the Eco 7 fuse box is not powered up. Perhaps the electricians have disconnected the main feed inside the fuse box, pending completion of their work.

I would contact them on Monday and chase them up to get the job completed. And at the same time press the HA for some contribution towards the peak rate electricity you have had to use to heat your water.

I would also ask the electricians to confirm that they have wired all four Quantums with two sets of wiring and to change the labeling in the fuse boxes so the names are the same for each Quantum on both fuse boxes..

GibbsRule_No3.

Almost 4am. So have pressed the test buttons, nothing happened. The heater in the bathroom is just a pull cord heater, blowing hot air. The Smart meter was installed in May and at this time of night/morning does read 11pence, during the day it reads 39p.
Re labelling, in the Eco fusebox, it looks like they wrote something under the T2 and then covered it over with SPD label, if I was pushed to say what I think it said, I’d say “lounge”. Then the next few also have cover up labels, before the kitchen storage heater gets  written without a cover label. Only a day to wait until I find out when they can come back.

Thank you, everyone for all your help in this matter. I will let you know if/when it gets fixed and I’m sure I’ll be very happy with the QDs.  

lohr500

Thanks for the update and for the testing you did. 

I am pretty sure then that they have disconnected the Economy 7 power inside the Economy 7 fusebox until they return to finish the job

Also, the fact that your bathroom heater is a pull cord, or air blower would suggest that an additional spur and breaker needs adding to the main fusebox for the large Quantum Heater.

HOpefully they can get the job finished quickly and leave you to enjoy the benefits of the Quantum storage heaters.

GibbsRule_No3.

Lohr500 they said it was ready to use that night when they left on Friday morning. But they would be back when they got the blanks, no urgency for that, as it was meant to be working that evening when the E7 came on and it depended when they were doing one of my other neighbours install.  Another of my neighbour knocked after they left to see if it was working, as she had been talking to another neighbour, who does not live on site every day but he had, had his done and it wasn’t working. I know he has a prepaid meter card, so don’t know how E7 works with those, I pay by DD. They should have installed one on Friday but were told the household had Covid so could not get entry. The neighbour that knocked does not have E7 and wants the HA to install oil filled heaters, so she is fighting with them over that. I am going to feel very sorry for my 92 year old neighbour when they install hers, operating them is an art in itself programme wise. All day programmed setting sees the heaters come on 4 times, with the fan running, old NSH obviously had no fan it just leaked heat all day/evening/night, so I’m wondering how much it costs, at peak rate, to run the fan, unless that is where the solar panels could help? Suppose it will be a few months of monitoring the cost when they do get it running.

FFHillbilly

the fan is not going to be expensive to run so I wouldn't worry about that. what I would worry about is using peak electric to boost the heating, I programmed some new NSH recently and they just had on off times and temperatures, if you selected too much heat in your schedule towards the end of the day the heater would just switch on a "balancing element" using peak rate to maintain the temp. I would hate to have to live with that it could get expensive  

Scot_39

FFHillbilly said:

the fan is not going to be expensive to run so I wouldn't worry about that. what I would worry about is using peak electric to boost the heating, I programmed some new NSH recently and they just had on off times and temperatures, if you selected too much heat in your schedule towards the end of the day the heater would just switch on a "balancing element" using peak rate to maintain the temp. I would hate to have to live with that it could get expensive  

Heating on a typical e7 day rate is about as bad as it gets on a normal domestic supply contract.

And in the ops case a fairly steep "balance" / "seesaw" around the Ofgem nominal MR rate - as split at 11p vs 39p from post above - so is especially expensive - at the 39p day rate.

(My suppliers E7 rates in my region are c14/c35 (my e10 18/35p)  - and even that 35p is 8p more than the current SR - it's really not something you want to be using a lot of power at for any length of time - without the balancing saving on heating / hot water to drag the average back down)

So hopefully the OP will get a speedy response tomorrow when calls.

EssexHebridean

Unless Dimplex have changed the Quantums they do not use a balancing element to maintain the temperature - their boost setting is completely manual.