Hot Water Question, New to Ireland

NorseRunes

Greetings!

Im hoping someone can provide some insight as we just relocated to a house here. We have a pay as you go gas card. I forget to check the meter and it ran out a few days ago. Since topping up we are having issues with the hot water, home heating works fine.

Ive attached some pictures of the electric switches for the hot water, from searching on the these boards, this appears to be what you would call an immersion system here ? Ive placed the switch to On and Bath, now running from this switch is the timer which I just set to constant on (Orange light is lit) From this runs power to another fused switch, which has no indication what it actually does (only a red inidicator strip depending on the position) What position is ideal for this switch and what exactly does the red marker indicate? Sorry for the noob question but Ive never seen a system like this and couldnt find any posts explaining. Here are some links to images , cant attach since Im a new user, so I put a space between www. img--- Thanks !

Bath, Sink and Timer
www. imgur.com/zbYVOzQ

Mystery Switch
www. imgur.com/F4ywmrh

coylemj

The second photo ('mystery switch') is of a device called a 'switched fused spur', this needs to be permanently on in order for the clock to keep proper time, you'd only switch it off if there was a fault with the clock or if you were getting a new (e.g. digital) timer. Some spurs have a red LED light to show when it's switched on, yours doesn't seem to have this but you mentioned a red strip, you need to set the rocker switch so that this strip is visible, this means the switch is set to 'ON'. On the lefthand side of that spur is the cover for the fuse, you can prise this open with a narrow flat head screwdriver but have your hand underneath to catch the fuse in case it falls out of the holder when it comes off.

The On/Off Sink/Bath switch is standard on all immersion tanks which have an electric element. There are two elements sticking down into the water, the one that's powered when the switch is set to Bath uses more juice (kW) and is longer so it heats more of the water.

This is how your system is wired ...

mains feed >>>>>> switched spur >>>>> timer >>>>> On/Off Sink/Bath switch >>>>> immersion heating elements

So to heat water, you need the spur switched on, the timer has to be either permanently on or the timer ('clock') is currently active and the bottom (Sink/Bath) switch is set to 'On' and the other switch set to Sink or Bath depending on how much hot water you need.

To manually disable the system e.g. if going away for a weekend, set either the timer or the bottom switch to 'Off'. Leave the spur always switched on, otherwise the clock on the timer will stop and you'll have to reset it to the correct time next time you switch the spur to 'On'.

I'm not going to post the photos inline because they're too big, here are links to them with your titles.....

Bath, Sink and Timer
www.imgur.com/zbYVOzQ

Mystery Switch
www.imgur.com/F4ywmrh

NorseRunes

Thanks a lot , for the excellent detailed explanation, cleared everything up! The switched fuse spur was in the wrong position.