how does my old Backerloy Heater work

[oliver]

Hi,

I have moved into a house with an electric water heater (Backerloy

311C) and because it often seems to run excessively during the night I was wondering what I can do about it. It has a power lead going to the top and on to the bottom of the heater and they can be switched off separately. Does anyone know what the two connections are for? Or why sometimes the heater is running all night?

Many Thanks Oliver

[Owain]

The top heater is used to heat the top of the tank only eg for washing up. The bottom heater heats the whole tank eg for baths.

You have off-peak / White Meter / Economy 7 and the bottom heater is using cheap-rate electricity at night?

Do you have electric heating?

Owain

[PeterK]

If you look at you will see your immersion heaters in the left hand drawing as #3 & #4. If you then read the "stored hot water" section lower down you'll see reference to heating your water overnight. (you may not have a system that exactly mirrors the diagram but in respect of two immersion heaters and a tank of hot water "it'll do"). Each of your heaters will have a thermostat under their metal caps to limit the hot water temperature and somewhere I would expect you have a time switch to switch the bottom element on at night. Something like this

or it could be next to your electricity meter (esp.if you have electric storage heaters) peterk

[oliver]

this

or it could be next to your electricity meter (esp.if you have electric

Thanks Owain and Peter. Your information helped a lot and I now understand what is happening. Oliver