Heating & Contactors

[person]

Heating in new house is storage heaters (total control). At mains board there is also a seperate board marked storage for each heater then another board full of contactors that is marked 24 hour. Does anybody fancy explaining how this works? ie contactors and when heaters are powered etc.

 

[mfarrow]

There should be a timer in there also?

Basically you'll have an MCB for each storage heater circuit, and a corresponding contactor connected to a timeswitch (maybe taken from the DNO's timer). When the meter is on economy7, the contactors will recieve a voltage from the timeswitch and close to operate the storage heaters.

 

[Taylortwocities]

I do not think you mean contactors.

Do you mean contact breakers?
Those switch things that say B16 on them?

 

[person]

Yeah possibly it is contact breakers, they say things like c16 on them. Theres no timer so does mean that these are switched on/off by the authorities?

 

[flameport]

C16 will be a circuit breaker, a contactor is a completely different item.

Not sure how many boards you have got, but a typical setup would be:

1 board for the usual house circuits (lights, sockets etc), this will be on permanently (24h)
1 board for the heating, this will only be on at certain times as determined by the electricty supplier.

Another option would be 3 boards, with the 3rd one being on 24 hours and supplying a fan or extra heater built into the storage heaters.

 

[person]

Thanks for the replys. The other question I was going to ask was about the switches, they are really old and one seems damaged, they are not fused and I was just wondering if it is 20amp switch fuses i replace them with.

 

[Aragorn84]

They will probably be "20A Double Pole Switches"

They arent usually fused.

 

[person]

Ok thanks. I just thought maybe they needed fused as the panel heaters upstairs were switch fuses but I understand now that the storage heaters do not need to be fused?

 

[Taylortwocities]

They are fused, by the C16 contact breakers in the consumer unit.

Just replace the broken one with the same again and you shouldn't go wrong!

 

[flameport]

Before replacing anything, make sure the circuits are turned OFF at the board. Don't rely on the heating only being on at certain times of the day.