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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ต.ค. 2024
- This video goes through my replacement of 2 40gal electric water heaters in series to a single Stiebel Eltron Tempra Plus 36KW all electric heater. The video walks through uninstalling the tanks, installing the tankless and wiring the electrical for the tankless. This is only for entertainment and you should use a plumber and electrician for the install.
The reason for the change was two fold; One the electric tanks are 12+ years old and are getting close to replacement time. Two, I'm hoping to decrease my electric bill and have this changed paid for within 2 years.
I did run into an electrical issue after the install the Emporia Vue2 helped me find. Without it, I would have thought the Tempra just couldn't do what it advertised.
I'm in the Southeast and incoming water is ~55F and I can achieve ~3gpm before the Tempra water regulator starts decreasing hot water flow to meet the outgoing water temp of 130F. I'll be experimenting lowering the temp to see if I can achieve a higher gpm and still meet individual's wants for water temp. I'll update in a few months on how it effects my electric bill.
A tip from a Licensed Electrician.... ALWAYS wire the devices FIRST... then land the wires on the breakers. Safety First is always the smart way to go.
Thanks for making this video I got some much needed info from it.
If I understand the last minute of your video the canister 2 actually was connected to a faulty breaker? Who would have guessed. Your power monitor really came in handy! Can you confirm that reading of low current on #2 was due to breaker or is that part of the normal operation of the Tempra to adjust power?? I know that is how they work to maintain temp on my NON plus models, but the question is would the power reduction be fairly even across the canisters? Thanks for the helpful video.
It was a breaker issue. I replaced the 50amp with a new one and it worked fine.
I'd like to offer a better way of doing the wiring for this unit. While it is true that the ground only has space for one connector, that doesn't mean that all three aren't supposed to be connected. Connecting them inside the unit is impractical and somewhat unsafe, but connecting them on a bus bar inside a box before it is fed into the unit, and using a heavy lug for a 4 AWG large ground wire inside the unit is the better way to go. That way you've got rock solid ground connections from the unit to the panel.
That's sure nice when your breaker box is right next to the heater! Those wires are expensive!
LOL, tell me about it, im about to go purchase them now. :( Not looking forward to it.
Looks great, great job!
@Foray Fog, Can U do a video showing AMP display option of your Emporia Vue monitored circuits? ThankU.
Uploaded one for ya
Forgive me for asking, I'm no journeyman, in neither plumbing or electricity, but, what is a sharkbite?
Nm, I answered my own question
Comment please on any possible benefit to running 2 units, both 24 or 29 or 1- 24 and 1- 29 in series. I have a large house in northern Idaho, inlet water 45 degrees from a well, lots of power (I think) and breaker panels are literally mounted above the 2 existing 50 gallon tank heaters that I wish to get rid of for space reasons, that are currently ran in series, one does 45 to 80??? feeding the other that does 80??? to 125 0r whatever. If you don't set the set temp to 140, are you pulling 50A x 3? Anyone see a huge fireball in northern Idaho next month, perhaps my idea didn't work.
That's a tough one.. My thoughts:
1) If you do buy a unit, go without the 'plus'. The non-plus version does not limit outgoing flow based on temp. Let it heat up as much as it can and move on to the second one in series to try and heat up more. Coming from 45F is going to be hard, but series may actually work. The non-plus versions are usually used for floor heating (circulating hot water in tubes under tile and so forth)
2) Two units is going to be a LARGE amount of power. These are dual breakers, so when it says 3x50amps, its actually 50amps on both phases or up to 300amps (50*3 -> 150amps * 2 (dual breakers) = 300amps for a single unit max. When I'm running max flow, ~ 3gpm, I see ~45amps on each breaker, 45*3->135amps, *2 for dual breaker or 270amps total. If you were running two units, you would need to have at least two separate circuit breaker panels (normally each one is rated 150-200amps per phase on each panel) and you would be using the majority of power on each panel leaving very little for other high draw items like an oven, hvac, etc. I won't say it won't work, but seems unlikely.
3) The two tanks in series you have now (like I had previously) are usually put in place for larger homes with high hot water volume use. There are separate thermostats for each one, but the temp set is normally the same for both. Generally hot water comes from 2nd tank to the house and while hot water is emptying from the tank, the 1st tank feeds hot water in the 2nd so you have hot water filling the 2nd. As the 1st tank fills from the well, the temp drops dramatically (45F entering) but the 2nd tank still has hot water feeding the house. It would be similar to an 80g tank have 4 elements rather than two 40g with 2 elements. Its just a little more efficient and fault tolerant to have two tanks.
4) It would take some work and you may not want to do it, but you could look at solar water heater feeding one of these tankless to bring the water temp up and not require 2 tankless units.
How many gallons can it do before it caps the water flow with all 3 breakers working now?
I've never had it trip the breakers and the highest pull I've seen is ~ 47amps across all 3 breakers which are dual, so 47x6, 282amps. If you have a 200amp breaker panel, you actually have 400 amps, phase 1 being 200 and phase 2 being 200. Generally you double panel amperage, but learn or hire someone if this is not clear. In my case, which incoming cold water at ~62F and the outflow set at 130F, I get 3gpm. If someone runs a tub full hot and someone runs a shower full hot, the unit regulates the outflow to ensure the set temp is reached on the outflow. The unit throttles the outgoing gpm to make it reach that temp (if it didn't throttle outgoing water, the output would be below the set temp which it can't reach based on incoming water temp and gpm). When it does throttle, you'll see less pressure from the faucet/shower head. It will still be the right temp, but how fast it comes out is effected. My family can generally keep track of who is doing what so its not an issue, but sometimes dishwasher kicks off or washing machine and it will change the temp of the outgoing water until you adjust the handles in a shower/faucet.
I'm still happy with it. Nothing is perfect. I would install again for me, but I wouldnt buy a house with electric tankless, it would have to be gas tankless.
Ok. Thank you for the info. I appreciate it. It sounds like I’ll just stick to a tank as I’m all electric at my house. Yeah, I noticed gas ones can handle more.
Ok. Thank you for the info. I appreciate it. It sounds like I’ll just stick to a tank as I’m all electric at my house. Yeah, I noticed gas ones can handle more.
Ok. Thank you for the info. I appreciate it. It sounds like I’ll just stick to a tank as I’m all electric at my house. Yeah, I noticed gas ones can handle more.
@@forayfog2276 Ok. Thank you for the info. I appreciate it. It sounds like I’ll just stick to a tank as I’m all electric at my house. Yeah, I noticed gas ones can handle more.
I would have used a crimp sleeve for the grounds and then tie it all in to the tank so it is all grounded
Similar concept to what I'm talking about above. The only thing is you want to have the ground wire that is mounted inside to be a heavy gauge (the hole easily accommodates 4 AWG), and trying to tie those all together inside the enclosure is far too cramped. It's much easier outside the enclosure in a separate box, using a heavy lug on a small bus bar for the 4 AWG ground wire and mounting the other three wires onto the bus bar, which gives you rock solid ground in both directions.
I'm in the exact same boat you were with two 50 gallon electric hot water heaters and I'm pretty sure it's at least 30 to 40% of our electric bill and my wife routinely can empty both tanks in one of her freakishly hot 20+ minute showers. Looking to kill 2 birds with one stone so I'm looking at the exact same model you installed. What kind of GPM are you getting now that all the canisters are working? How about cost/energy savings? Would you do it again?
I've been slacking and need to do a new update. This is the main jist;
Water Flow:
GPM is less than I wanted. I'm maxing out at 3GPM before the unit starts throttling water delivery. Incoming water is 62 degrees (cold incoming). I have the unitset at 130 degrees. The water gets hot fast and then after a few minutes gets burning hot after pipes have all heated up. If I set it lower, it doesn't get hot enough fast enough for some members of the family.. I can run 2 showers or 1 bath or the kitchen faucet and a shower. Its fairly limited. That being said we work around it know the limitation and it hasn't been an issue.
Power Savings:
Power savings is good, not great. The catch is with unlimited water people take longer showers. I need to do some more calculations over time, but I was instantly seeing ~30% savings on daily power consumption for the water heater. I have Emporia power monitors and graphed out old tank power usage vs tankless.
Do it again?:
Because I can do this on my own, probably. The only bad side is the GPM. Would I buy a house with an electric one given my family size, no. Would I put one in if there were tanks, maybe. This install cost me ~ $1,100 in total. This will start saving me money in less than 2 years. A gas one would have cost much more as I would have hired someone to do it and the return would have been 5+ years.
Overall:
We like it, we are saving money and we never run out of hot water. The 150amp pulls usually about 130amps at most so watch what else you have on the panel and ensure you have enough free amps. If I was staying somewhere long term, I'd go with gas due to the number of people in the house, but short term electric works great too.
@@forayfog2276 Thanks for the update. I spent about 2 to 3 weeks casually gathering all the supplies for this install. Our hot water tanks are on the far side of the house so I planned to relocate ours to the middle of the basement for better delivery all over the house. This proved to be...very expensive.
Three 50 foot runs of 6/2 ended up being over $500 by itself. We got a steal on the unit as an Amazon like-new return at $450...never installed before. By the time all was said and done, we were in it nearly $1500; all the stuff needed to do this right added up very, very quickly. I'm very mechanically inclined and had mapped out everything for the perfect install to code. I had no doubt I couldn't install it myself, but I wouldn't try a gas install.
Literally 1 day before I was to start the install, I discovered that our parallel plumbed water heaters weren't installed correctly and I investigated. Following your lead, I purchased 2 Emporia monitors (one for each breaker box) and found that the incorrect plumbing was causuing 1 water tank to do nearly 3/4 the work and thus 1 ran out MUCH faster which caused a lot of our issues. Mind you, this is a 2021, newly built home, so the $810 tanks (each) are less than a year old. After re-doing the plumbing issue into the tanks, I found that much of our issue with our 100 gallons of hot water were solved. Then, by simply installing a hot water re-circulation pump, we were able to get instant hot water for less than $100. Our electric heater demand dropped nearly 50% and it changed our whole pricing model for the tankless. It went from estimated 3 years to paying itself off to nearly 8 years. Since our tanks are new we just opted to leave it all be and will likely do tankless down the line when these tanks do go out. I wish I had known this was an option when we built but our contractors never even mentioned it as an option.
Luckily, we were able to return everything for 100% refunds as nothing was opened that couldn't be returned fully. I found your review to be immensely helpful and your reply here furthers to confirm all my concerns, as all my math for Ohio-temp water showed the same as you say, that being that 3GPM was about all we would be able to get consistently. Like you said, I'm sure it would have worked, but I didn't know if it was worth all the effort/cost. As for gas, we have solar panels so electric is the only way we would want to go, as propane to our home is insanely expensive and paying someone to do the exhaust would add significant expense thus defeating the cost savings entirely.
Thanks again for both the install instructions as well as the plug for Emporia. If anything came from this, it's how much I love nerding out on the Emporia stuff to everyone. Consumption CTs really are awesome.
I installed the same model. I found it on FB marketplace as an open box item. $150 for a $700 item. I had a choice between this one with the 3 heating elements or the one with 2 heating elements. This model has a built in flow sensor, which I'd rather not have. As the owner in the video mentioned in his comment, it can throttle down the flow sometimes. And that sensor can go bad and require replacement. That being said, I'm happy with the tankless water heater, particularly because I got a great price for the unit and did the install myself. Total cost for me was about $500. The electrical work was the most expensive. I was lucky to be close to my panel and have enough empty breaker slots to add the 3 required runs.
Recommend this unit.
Si el calentador de agua fuera el modelo Stiebel electron tempra 24 plus como seria la instalación eléctrica y de plomeria si es para remplazar un calentador electrico de tanque ?
Yo agradeceria mucho si muestran como se instala un calentador de esa misma marca pero no tan grande, el que tengo comprado es el Stiebel electron Tempra 24 plus
Por favor me pueden dar esa asesoria y que materiales se necesitan aparte de los asesorios que trae el paquete de este modelo o tipo ?
si requiere otros alambres electricos mas gruesos o mejor dicho de mayor calibre y cuantos pies aproximadamente se necesitan estando el tablero de Brecks de amperaje muy cerca asi como lo muestra este video🎉
The longer the distance from the panel to the heater, the larger wire you will need. There are websites like this that have tables to show you:
learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/working-with-wire/wire-thickness
There were a number of items needed
1) Three dual pull 50 amp breakers:
www.amazon.com/Q250-50-Amp-Double-Circuit-Breaker/dp/B00002N7KX
2) Wire/cable
3) Conduit for cable and plugs to secure conduit to Tempra
4) On/off valves with flush connectors:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085Q8DL8B
5) 2' flexible hoses with proper connectors to fit Tempra and PVC (sharkbite in my case, or make extensions with PVC and glue to threaded end. One I used was this but make sure ends fit your design:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09FFMYP33/
What wire do you use solid or stranded? And size
6/2 romex. so 6 awg, stranded, 3 wires. 2 hot and 1 ground. ground was only used out of one of three 50amp feeds.
Can you connect without connecting line 1 and line 2
the unit will not power on without power coming in on all 3 lines.
It would be very very usefull, to know if somebody measured the actuall lowest power in Kw, that this heater can work, even with the lowest available gpm.
Just curious, how would that be helpful? Why not buy a unit rated for the power that can be supplied (or a much smaller unit) versus one requiring power much higher than can be supplied? The lowest I've seen this unit pull is 90amp on a single phase and its dual, so 180amps.
3 50 amp breakers?
I just got one too. Yes 3x 50A breakers. Had to install more bc I didn't have enough
@@sethmcbay5501wire size??
How many amps is the service panel?
Each panel has two phases and each phase has a 200amp breaker (a double pull 200 amp breaker). That would give each panel a max of 400amps if load was split evenly between both phases.
@@forayfog2276 have any updates on the scoring and power?
So what's the electric bill like?
water heater electric use is 35-40% less. water heater use goes up in the winter so I'm hoping the savings goes to 40-45% for electric use on the water heater.
@@forayfog2276 thx. Good luck!
Heat up the pvc before u cut it and it won’t crack
My display screen will not stay on.
If the screen is not staying on, in my experience, you are not getting power on all thres 50 amp circuits. If you have a smaller unit, you are not getting enough power on each individual feed line.
Update!!