I have a Pulsacoil A Class in a 2 bed flat and have just had my first bill - for 6 months a huge £500. Not high to some but as I previously paid around £30 per month for my electricity/gas I realise there is something wrong. I believe it's just belting out 24/7 but I can't find where the switches are to ensure it's only working on Economy 7. Um, urgent help?

Also there is a small leak from somewhere on the front of it. A friend looked at it and said all it needed was a box spanner (or something like that) to tighten the screw. Is it necessary to get a Pulsacoil engineer out to do this job as I have just been quoted a lot of money just for getting this done, or can anybody with such a spanner, do it?

Thanks.

Tina Clark, July 2015

If you have storage heaters they are wired to a separate fuseboard, there should be a circuit for the water heater as well in the same board so the element only becomes live during the night,if not the circuit could be live all the time which is unusual
If you have economy 7,your bill will have 2 sets of readings
sometimes there is a timer in the kitchen about the size of a single socket with an LCD display

toptrish, July 2015

We found two switches, one that is the power supply to the Pulsacoil unit and another right near it, which after leaving it switched off for a while the water wasn't heating, so it needed to be turned back on.
We cannot find another switch/isolater/E7 timeclock and are wondering where this might be situated and what it/they look like.
Thank you for the info regarding the leak and a suitable engineer.

Tina Clark, July 2015

There should be 2 supplies to the unit
1;a 24 hour mains supply to power the unit which is also used to power the top element if needed
2;an isolator for the off peak supply to the bottom element. or it could have an E7 timeclock, any person who knows about these should be able to set you straight.
the leak is most likely from inside the element thermostat tube the only remedy is replacing the element which requires emptying the whole unit.
The elements are not expensive and can be bought from any DIY outlet it should take about 3 hours to do,I don't know where you live but there should be plenty of people capable of doing it other than a Pulsacoil engineer

toptrish, July 2015