Hi,
My 89 year old mother lives in a council house, which has been all electric since my late father had the gas removed and economy 7 installed. Since father passed away earlier this year and not knowing much about the household things she no relies on me to sort things out when they go wrong.
She called last week to say the hot water was luke warm, so i drove over and investigated. The council in there wisdom had installed a box that replaced the old timers my father had used when the did a major upgrade (new kitchen and replacement cylinder) a few year back. Now I know why their bills were so high. My research on the net shows this box to be a Horstmann BX2000. This has a normal feed from the consumer unit for day use, and a second feed from the economy 7 outlet from the meter (via a fuse box). There is no timer on this unit, just two switches for turning on or off the two supplies. The outlet from this unit connects to a single immersion heater. So the immersion is on all the time, simply relying on the thermostat to determine when to turn it on or off - so she is constantly heating and re-heating the tank of water over a 24 hr period.
We've had the council out to sort the problem out, which appears to be a faulty controller. However I would really like some means of setting the on / off times as she only really needs to heat the water once during the night so she has a tank of water throughout the day. I've seen that Horsmann do a digital programmable economy, and Timeguard also do a similar unit, however these seem to have a single supply in, and just five terminals (whereas the BX2000 has ten).
So down to my question... If I get one of these units, how would I connect it up so it uses both the economy 7 off peak supply that is live when the meter switches over at night, and the constant supply which is live 24/7.
Cheers
Malcolm
My 89 year old mother lives in a council house, which has been all electric since my late father had the gas removed and economy 7 installed. Since father passed away earlier this year and not knowing much about the household things she no relies on me to sort things out when they go wrong.
She called last week to say the hot water was luke warm, so i drove over and investigated. The council in there wisdom had installed a box that replaced the old timers my father had used when the did a major upgrade (new kitchen and replacement cylinder) a few year back. Now I know why their bills were so high. My research on the net shows this box to be a Horstmann BX2000. This has a normal feed from the consumer unit for day use, and a second feed from the economy 7 outlet from the meter (via a fuse box). There is no timer on this unit, just two switches for turning on or off the two supplies. The outlet from this unit connects to a single immersion heater. So the immersion is on all the time, simply relying on the thermostat to determine when to turn it on or off - so she is constantly heating and re-heating the tank of water over a 24 hr period.
We've had the council out to sort the problem out, which appears to be a faulty controller. However I would really like some means of setting the on / off times as she only really needs to heat the water once during the night so she has a tank of water throughout the day. I've seen that Horsmann do a digital programmable economy, and Timeguard also do a similar unit, however these seem to have a single supply in, and just five terminals (whereas the BX2000 has ten).
So down to my question... If I get one of these units, how would I connect it up so it uses both the economy 7 off peak supply that is live when the meter switches over at night, and the constant supply which is live 24/7.
Cheers
Malcolm
