Quote:
Originally Posted by where2
If you put that Energy Smart water heater on a timer, it still works, but doesn't draw any current for the hours it is not running. If you fish your hand around the cover, you'll find a warm spot toward the right side where most of your continuous 20W is converting from electrical energy to heat energy. I have the Whirlpool version with that brain board, and mine has been living on a timer for over a year. I also downgraded the heating elements in mine after reading numerous reviews indicating the boards (more likely the relays) were not holding up well on the Whirlpool version. I've never had an issue with the brain board in 5+ years.
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But, overall its a useless piece of gadget. If you have it set to 130F, it will turn down to 115F but not less. Since I can get away with setting at 120F, the smart logic is not doing anything that a ordinary water heater isn't doing. If it had a built-in timer, so that separate permit is not needed to install it legally, it would sweeten the deal.
It claims to learn your usage over a long period of time, so the learning effect is probably gone too if you put it on a timer. I've noticed some iffy reviews no this too such as failures related to the proprietary board and the lack of economical immediately available replacement parts. If I knew it at the time, I would've avoided it.
I need to measure the standby loss of tank itself, but that would require not using hot water for about a week and metering the kWh usage in order to get a reasonably accurate data. the problem is that the 175kWh that it wastes away is coming off from the control board which is on the outside and does not offset heat losses from the tank shell, but an additional loss.
http://www.descoenergy.com/pdf/Gas%2...cal%20Side.pdf
Take a look at this. It's interesting to note that ECM has a higher standby power use on the average, but they fail to factor this into efficiency evaluation. It's just a symptom of the underlying problem of the excess applications of embedded systems based appliances.
