Economy 7

[uksparks]

Hi,

I need to put 4 storage heaters in for a customer...

Its having a new board, thats separate to the storage heater board (only 4 heaters, so a small cu)

See photo below of setup at present.

Ill be honest, I have only ever change boards and setups that exist.

They said EDF will not fit the meter until the storage heaters and board are in place, but don't really know what I need as I don't know what im going to be dealing with on the supply side...

Presumably they will change the meter to something different, but how many outputs will it have? Any ideas?

I was just going to put the heaters into a board on its own and take a feed to it, but will i need a contactor to pull it on? I don't know as it doesn't exist, thats the issue.

Presumably I will have L and N in to the meter, and L and N out, but do I have two lives or a L and a fly lead to a contactor? It needs to be on a timer you see, which they said the meter will do that, but I have not got a great deal of experience with meters in this respect to be honest. Like I say, I'm ok when it exists, but when its imaginary...

Any help much appreciated.

 

[dazza1981]

I have eco 7 in my house and i have 1 fuseboard !!!
One set of tails for the on peak feeding the main switch then an rcd for for the circuits.
Then Another set of tails for the off peak which feeds another 80 amp rcd for my storage heaters and hot water which obviously only become live when the meter switches it on at around midnight !!
sssssssimples !!!!!!!

 

[dingledong]

The reason it's hard to get the unusual configurations is because no one uses them so they have to be ordered

 

[Octopus]

Thank you Richard for the lengthy reply, much appreciated.

Ill try and get a straight answer from EDF tomorrow and see what they say, to be honest I've seen such a variety or setups, nothing appears to be very standard in this area.

I don't know why they can't just terminate it into a block or isolator because I would be able to go along and know what's what, it's blooming rediculous really as its not making life easy.

I could get a board and put it ll in then it not be big enough if I need a Contactor etc, because if it is only 4 heaters I can get away with a small board that just house it all and the RCD.

Because one of their key reasons to exist is to annoy anyone touching electrics!

You could install a CU like this:

http://www.gil-lec.co.uk/wylex-nhii...NjTlfBocpgnJ9axHyVlNtuWngHv2HtVztWxoCsYrw_wcB

 

[uksparks]

I'll be honest Murdoch, I'm not a fan of boards with two supplies in them, I feel it's not the best thing you could do, I know you shouldn't touch it unless you know what your doing but I feel it would be possible for someone to switch one switch off and not realise there's two feeds and leave half the board live, I know you would have to be rather special but...

 

[davesparks]

There's only so far you can go to protect idiots. If they cant read the sticker that tells them there's more than one main switch/point of isolation then there's no helping them really.

By the same token they may well just assume that the second board is only going to be live at night so don't need to switch it off, until the afternoon boost kills as they have a go at changing the stat in their immersion heater.

 

[ferg]

I normally use 2 boards because each heater on it's own breaker plus HW.

3 beds, kitchen, hallway, bathrooms, sitting room etc.

Then with the normal ccts plus convectors on some of the storage heaters on the 24hr board.

It all starts getting a bit much for 1 board.

 

[PEG]

The tele switching arrangement is quite common round here on 60's ish properties,where they started life with one rewireable board for non heating,and another small one for either underfloor/storage and/or emersion. Can get a bit confusing where previous changes have swopped hot water heating to other side,or indeed on one occasion,someone added a switched 24/7 option on the E7 emersion circuit. Original mechanical timer for underfloor heating in parents house,still working fine from 1964,comes on 3hrs in the afternoon and about 7hrs through the night. Neighbour across the way told me last week,the nice man from Norweb,left the seal off the time clock door for when "you need to warm up a bit out of hours..." i said that was not really allowed,she said he would'nt get into trouble as he's probably retired,i asked why she thought that,she says "It was 1976..." :stooge_curly:

 

[driverman]

in the past contactors were only used if the off peak load was large. In other words too great for the t/switch.I wouldn't of thought 4 x storage points would be classed as large.