Just as a bit of background, I live in a 2 bedroom ground floor apartment. There’s no gas and everything runs off electric. I’ve been here 5 years and have always had fairly high electric bills (around £180 per month and can go higher in the winter). I’ve got night storage heaters in every room although not all of them are turned on.
Around 3 years ago, my hot water cylinder gave up the ghost. The electrician came out and said he’d repaired the elements before and that it would now need replacing. So I got a new cylinder installed. The electric cost has continued to be high and not changed.
The cupboard housing the cylinder is generally always closed but I’d left the door wide open today and happened to be walking past it at around 2pm and could hear it boiling away which I thought was odd as it should not be on at that time!
Just to double, I flicked off the bottom switch on the wall which is a hard wired to the bottom element in the tank and sure enough, the water stopped heating.
Does anyone have any ideas? One of the other guys in my apartment block was complaining to me the other day that his electric was £300 per month so I’m wondering if we’ve got a problem somewhere in the building between the peak and off peak rate? I can’t see any reason why my water would be heating during the day time unless I don't understand the principal of how this all works (which is possible!)
There's no timer anywhere as you can see so it's just hard wired in to the wall.
I’ve attached some pictures.
thanks in advance!