I would like to shut off my water heater during the day while I’m at work and at night while sleeping. Ideally this would be through vera… so I could wake up the water heater on demand about an hour before it needs to be used. I found a couple contact style relays for high current draw but they seem to all have been discontinued. (i.e. Intermatic)
The only solution I have found is a contact relay made by ELK that gets energized by a standad outlet. I could install a cheap intermatic zwave outlet and have that be the control for the higher current ELK relay… see any reason why this wouldn’t work?
The problem with what you are trying to do is it’s still going to use a lot of energy to bring that water back up to proper temp. Especially if you have a large water heater. In the long run you would be better off with a tankless water heater. They make electric ones now. They aren’t cheap but will save you about 20% in energy costs. I’ve heard the electric ones work better then the gas ones in some ways because the gas ones don’t kick on when you have very low flow and just want a trickle of hot water. The way to fix that was you would have to get a very small water heater of like 5 gallons.
I thoroughly agree with reiserx’s assessment, and have heard the same anecdotes from plumbers and vendors. Plus, one added advantage of using electrical fixtures is that Vera can ultimately monitor their power usage (think TED 5000).
Next, someone will have to invent a “water flow meter” that can beam the home’s water usage to Vera as well!
I agree… to a point. It really depends on how long you are leaving the water heater idle as to if it will save money to physically power it off…
I installed my TED5000 yesterday, so I am still assessing what that length of time is. I have found that my water heater is certainly the biggest current draw on the system. My AC is ~4kW, but the water heater is around 6-7kW. I am pretty sure the water heater looks like it has 2 (or multiple) power modes. A “once in awhile lets keep the water hot” mode that consumes less power and a “quick recovery holy %&$ the shower is on” high power mode.
Like I said, still assessing all of the options. But I am a believer now that the TED5000 will save you 15% just based on awareness alone… I really didn’t give a hoot before… now I’m watching my usage and seeing $$$ in the money I could save. It has already convinced me to throw my 5 year old home server in the trash and buy something more economical (maybe atom processor based).
Oh, and BTW… I have looked inot the tankless heaters in the past. Especially here in Florida it would be great since we don’t need a very high temp rise over ground water to make a comfortable shower. I would probably only need one of the smaller electrical units.
The problem is that my house is only a year old, and I cannot bring myself to replace a perfectly good water heater. Especially when I don’t think I would be comfortable installing the tankless myself. You need some serious gauge wire and breakers going to such a unit. Not to mention I am not all that handy at the plumbing side… so the installation cost would be hard to offset.
