Need help with PulsaCoil 2000

Hi All,

I moved to a property with PulsaCoil 2000 installed.

My property uses single electricity meter so no Economy 7.

There is no manual for PulsaCoil 2000 so very confusing on what to do.

PulsaCoil 2000 has 2 controls:

Control 1: Switch named "Water Heater"
Control 2: Panel named Off-Peak with On/Off switch, Boost button and timer.

My questions are:

1. What does "Water Heather" switch do? Does it need to be constantly on? Does turning it on consume electricity?
2. I turned off-peak switch on and configured it to run 5am-7am. Is 2 hours enough to heat up the tank? If not, how many hours should it heat?
3. What exactly boost button does? Is it to use during off-peak or in general? How soon before taking the shower I need to press boot button to experience its effect?

I hope you will shed some light on this.

Thank you so much!

This is a link to a manual which should give you a better idea of how it should work.

https://www.gledhillpulsacoil.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PulsaCoil-2000-Installation-Manual.pdf

Hi mmartin,

Thank you so much for this!

Ive read the manual and it does shed some light, but, unfortunately, I still didn't find answers to my questions 1 and 2 above. It is still unclear what exactly Water Heater switch does, how much power it consumed and how it is different from the separate off-peak switch that apparently heats the tank? Also, how many hours does it need to heat to become full? Thanks.

Hi glad the manual helped a bit. OK from what I understand the system has two heating elements an off peak and an on peak but in your case as you don't have off peak both elements will run on the same tariff. With on and off peak systems generally you have the off peak element heating the tank in the evening/night (cheap rate if you have it) and then if at anytime you don't have enough hot water you can turn on the on the other element using the boost button to top the system up. I assume the water heater heater switch turns off all water heating. To test the elements you can draw off some hot water and try the various switches whilst checking the electricity meter to see how much juice is being used. If you have a SMART meter with energy monitor you will be able to see the load immediately. Performance wise it is a bit of a case of experimenting to see what settings keep the level of heat that you are looking for. Also with these systems sometimes one of the elements can fail but be masked by the other still working, there would probably be a noticeable drop in performance especially on boost. Of course if you have no history with the unit you have no historic performance to compare it with! The hot water performance is controlled by modulating the speed of the DHW pump to increase or decrease the flow of hot water through the plate heat exchanger and thus the water temperature. Hope this helps a bit more. Regards Murray

Hi Murray,

Thanks a lot for this, very helpful! I will follow your advise.

So I did some tests: the switch that says "Water Heating" was consuming electricity (around 6 kw in 9 hours) so I turned it off. The third switch was not consuming anything so I guess it is to turn the boiler on or off. I I turned it on and configured off-peak timer to run 2 hours every day.

No, I have a few more questions please:

1. It says that the water should be at least 50 degrees to be safe. How can I know if boiling heater for 2 hours will achieve that? Maybe I need to boil it for 1 hour or 3 hours instead? Is there a way to test?

2. If the pipes are going through the boiler the water should be hot anyway as long as the boiler has hot water insight. How come the water is cold when the boiler is turned off even though the water inside is hot?

3. Its a but unclear why they putted a separate "water heater" switch if one can turn off off-peak switch from its button and it should run in on-peak in that case?

Thanks.

Hi OK first when you say boiler I assume you mean the hot tank as I understand this system is only heated by the two immersion heaters.

With this in mind and looking at the wiring and instructions I think your unit is operating like this.

The third switch is the control circuit switch if you turn this off the supply will be removed from the hot water pump speed controller. With this switch off even though the tank is hot then you will not get hot water at the tap. The hot water at the tap needs the pump speed controller to be on so that as hot water is used the pump pushes hot water from the tank through the plate heat exchanger and this heats the incoming cold water to a maximum temperature of 55 degrees. The tank temperature should be around 72 degrees. The hot water temperature can be measured using a suitable thermometer such as a meat thermometer by holding it under the running water from a hot tap. The tank heating is controlled by the two immersion heaters each of these has a thermostat built into them as well as an additional safety thermostat to stop overheating if the normal stat fails. The bottom heater should ideally be fed by off-peak electricity and would normally come on in the night and heat the whole of the tank on a cheap rate, the hope would be that this would cover most of the households needs through the day (doubtful!). If the heat is dropping during the day then the boost option can be used to switch the top heater on to reheat the top part of the tank, this will be on the more expensive tariff of course. If you do not have off-peak then the system can be used the same way, that is bottom heater being used but this will be using more expensive electricity. The water heater switch will be controlling the heaters in conjunction with the boost control/timer etc..

So how long does it need to have the heaters on, well this is a how long is a piece of string jobs. The answer is for as long as is needed to meet the needs of the household. You would need to experiment to find the lower limit of time that still gives you enough hot water reserve to let you run your house. Remember that each heater has a thermostat built in so will switch off once the hot water has reached 72 degrees, obviously the top one is only heating the top half of the tank so potentially has less work to do I guess. According to the blurb the top part of the tank is enough to have a hot bath.

Just to restate the hot water in the tank is not what comes out of the tap, this is mains water that has been heated by the tank water via the heat exchanger. Phew hope this helps, as I say I have never had one of these so others may know the finer detail better than me. regards Murray