storage brick heating - turn off via thermo or main switch?

[mrfrosty30]

This is about a relatives council house with the old electric storage brick heating system installed. Im wondering what the majority would believe would be the best way of turning it off temporarily when its not required (eg on warm evenings-how is money best saved for them)? It charges overnight, on most nights as far as I can tell. Its thermostat is in the living-room, and theres also an on/off switch on the heaters timer where the heater resides (in the main kitchen cupboard). They use this switch rather than the thermostat, but does should it really matter which is used? This isnt directly related to any current weather, more of a general question. Its a Creda unit, but I cant see any model no, so I have no way of finding out any specific details, its age etc. Im not sure how long these systems take to heat up fully if they have been off for a long time, I am guessing it may take a good day or two, and a fair amount of electric in the process? Thanks for any recommendations if anyone has a good idea on storage brick systems.

 

[JohnD]

I find it odd to have a thermostat in the living room for a storage heater in another room. Are you sure it controls the storage heaters? It doesn't make sense to have a storage heater in a cupboard. Are you sure it isn't a hot water cylinder? Or do they have a version of Electricaire ducted warm-air heating?

I wonder if there is a control unit near the meter

post some pics. there is likely to be a separate consumer unit "fusebox" near the meter, and there might be a grey box as well.

//www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=129539

 

[Taylortwocities]

This is about a relatives council house with the old electric storage brick heating system installed.

Is this one of those with the heating elements embedded in the floor screed.??
The heating cable IIRC wss called Pyrotenax. This was a mineral insulated element cable.
Those did have a room stat. With big contacts as the current is quite large!.

If so, just turn the stat down.

 

[mrfrosty30]

yes, its probably an entirely different system. Whats the most likely type of central heating for council semi detached housing, if there is one? They mentioned 'brick heating' at first, so I believed it was related to that at first. In the kitchen cupboard, its essentially one very large heating tank, with no room for anything else aside from a timer dial on the right hand wall and its small round button (the one the household always uses to turn off heating when not required-switching off, the heater can cool completely). Below this timer and its button, are two white switches, identical to 2 seperate mains light switches, next door to one another. One is obviously for the timer, as its connected via a short grey cable. The larger switch is probably for the entire heating system, as the heater itself has no controls or buttons at all, aside from a night charge selection of 1 to 6 at the bottom. On top of the tank-very thick large grey tubing from the back leads upstairs/under the flooring, towards each rooms air vents no doubt. The only thermostat in the house is in the livingroom (30 to 80, heating comes on if set above 70, assuming 20 C). Its nowhere near the kitchen and heating tank,practically as far away as you can get in the livingroom, near a window.

I think the heater may only ever charge itself back up during the night, so perhaps it makes no difference what they use to temporarily switch off, whether its via any heater button on its timer, or room thermostat? I suppose it may also depend on how long they leave the system off for at any given time too, as they have said it can lose heat fast, so its probably not cheap to use in the long run. Perhaps switching to gas is the better option where possible if anyone is ever talking about saving, I dont know. Its too bad I dont know the specific type of heating-if I can find images or photos I will post them in future if its not obvious by now, but other than what ive described, theres little else to tell even with pics... aside from the fact that I know very little about heating in general, lol. Thanks for the replies

 

[JohnD]

I am going to guess that it is a warm-air system, and that the room stat probably turns the circulating blower on.

In which case you need the main switch if you don't need the heat reservoir to be warmed up.

I will guess that if the heat reservoir is warmed up, it will gradually give off heat even without the fan, but I should think that will take quite a few days to go cold. Equally, once fully cold in summer, I would expect it to take a few nights of power-on to reach its maximum warmth.

I will also guess that it has a White Meter or similar so that you only want it to be heated using cheap-rate electricity, there might be a timer on the meter to take care of that. In which case, even if you turn it on, you will not see the meter spinning round until about midnight when the cheap-rate timer comes on.

I have never seen one of those. It sounds like the kind of thing that Scottish Hydro might have been keen on in the old days. It would be very useful for you to look at a recent electricity bill to see what the peak, off-peak and standing charge are. If the householder is still with SSE they can almost certainly get a better rate by changing to another supplier. EDF currently have a fixed-price tariff that you can apply for online, but it is such a good deal that it might be withdrawn any time.

You do not need to have the supply cables or meter changed, as any supplier has an arrangement to rent them off the distribution network operator that owns them. The supplier just sends you one simple bill for usage and standing charge, and they deal with the network.

 

[mrfrosty30]

here are some pics of the system (not all the clearest):-
http://s7.postimage.org/az7uw2mrf/heater.jpg
http://s8.postimage.org/a4k3m9wqt/heater_timer_and_switches.jpg
http://s7.postimage.org/kewx0rjjv/living_room_thermo.jpg

I believe the user has never touched the two main switches next to the heater, only its timer dial on/off button, and the livingroom temp stat, when no heat is required. I think youve got it, being a warm air system/blower set up.. its essentially one large block. There are multiple on and off small silver slides sticking out of the heaters 24 hr timer dial, so it can be set it to come on at a select time if you take off the clear front casing. There are a few signatures, on the very bottom of the heater for each time it was checked. The earliest is 92, latest 99, so regarding age, it sounds like a stable system at a minimum of 20 yrs. They did mention that it can lose heat fast, so if thats not a sign for another re-check, its probably just being left off for too long, or needing something a bit more modern to take its place

Thanks for the replies, ill have to get hold of their on and off peak costs and do some comparisons.