I have just moved into an apartment as a tenant, the hot water for showers and taps is provided by a Pulsacoil 2000 boiler, the rooms are heated by electric heaters.
When I arrived at the property, I asked the agent for a manual for the usage of the boiler. She said to use google. There is however, a sentence about in the tenant guide for the property- "Either one or both switches can be used for hot water, these can be found on the wall next to the boiler."
I found some information about the thing on the www, and apparently the bottom switch is Economy 7 and the top one is the booster. Both switches were on when I arrived at the property for the first time. However, when the bottom one is switched on, it heats up the tank straight away without waiting for the Economy 7 period, same behaviour with the top switch. Once heated completely, it switches the heating off, but you can hear it come on every 10-15 minutes to keep topping up the heat - surely this is going to get very expensive using the electricity?
Another issue is the header tank above to keep the boiler topped up - when the boiler is on, this water in the header tank gets heated to at least the same temperature as the water coming out of the hot taps, is this correct, I thought these header tanks were supposed to be cold water? Being uninsulated, this transfers a lot - and I mean a lot - of heat energy to the rooms surrounding the boiler cupboard, including my bedroom, which can make it difficult to sleep at times. Again, this must be a tremendous waste of electricity.
As I have just moved into the property, I am unsure of the electricity tariff until I get my first bill from the supplier, but I do have a two rate meter system. I am also not used to using all the hot water in a ten minute shower - is this normal behaviour too? I can understand the boiler tank being emptied in this time, but my last property had a super duper gas boiler that provided hot water on demand from cold as soon as the tap was switched on and never seemed to run cold.
Thanks for reading, and any advice as to whether this is normal behaviour, or whether I should get in touch with the agent to find a plumber.