Brand new Rheem Water Heater. You know - to save money - more efficient than the 15 year old one bla bla bla…
After 1 month, thanks to Sense, I find out this thing is freaking out! The fun thing: Installer and Manufacturer says - I do not care about your energy monitor. This tank is working fine.
Man am I thankful to have SENSE!!!
This new Water Tank has cost us in the first 2 months the energy we would usually use for 1/2 a year!
Anyone ever had a similar thing happening to them? Imagine I would not have a SENSE! Just Imagine.
are you sure Sense is correctly attributing the power usage to the water heater? ie, not confusing anything else with that usage? You could also try setting up dedicated monitoring on the water heater to get a 100% accurate reading to fight them with…
Yes in this case I’m sure easy to test and repeat and test. And historical data clearly proofs it. Also the Water Heater was the only new device we got… 3 days later the energy burn started. Also the Water Heater has a LED for each of the elements when on…
I do realize that Sense is a gamble on device detection… however the totals have never failed and the Realtime monitor is working perfectly. Sense detects the resistive water heater pretty all the time I had never any false on the Water Heater only a possible miss which woudl reduce the total for the device but not for the month or week.
I’m going to be installing a new Rheem water heater at the end of the month to replace my 17 year old current unit. Hopefully I don’t have any issues with it.
I’m regretting it so far … Entered the next round in arguing something is wrong… Anyone know of a 240 Volt energy monitor that I could put in between needs to have loggin function.
that power usage looks like the water heater never turns off…is the temperature set correctly? there’s no reason it should be on that long, unless someone is taking a LONG shower, you’re washing clothes with warm/hot water, and running the dishwasher, too. And if the HWH is on that long, the temp relief valve should be dumping extra hot water…something doesn’t add up. I really like that you said the HWH has lights to indicate which element is on, that sounds really useful.
Agreed with @Edison517, it feels like its just not turning off, but if that were the case, you would be boiling a lot of water and should hear the tank venting (let alone see the flood).
If you aren’t using Solar, you get the Flex sensors and use Dedicated Circuit Monitoring to monitor the hot water circuit.
You would then be able to download hourly data from the Sense and with confidence, point at the Hot Water line.
Another lower tech solution (kinda). Do you have any Nest/Arlo/camera systems that you could point one at the hot water heater to show that the heating element lights don’t turn off? No logging other than a video that you can say “see, it never turns off, how can you say its working properly” even without the exact power draw.
Yeah, actually that video idea I also had with a time code
I did manage to manually check by eyesight some incidents where it was on for hours. I was not standing ion front of it for hours but checked in every 15-30 minutes while watching the bubble
Anyhow I’m also puzzled as the Always On is not consistent with real world experience as others mentioned the water should boil and steam off which did not happen as far as I can see. My wild guess is power goes somewhere else…
The crazy thing is all my tests with manually switching the Water Heater shows sense catches it ALL the time. So somehow what is shown in the Sense History seems to be correct, including the power draw. But I also know that the Bubble display is highly inaccurate and it shows things on and consumption while the realtime display beneath shows all devices off.
So it is not clear to me what exactly ends up in the tally per day,week,month.
Not sure how much money you wanna invest, but I have an Aquanta and it tracks power & water usage (it estimates) by using temp sensors on the inlet and outlet pipes. Sense is pretty close to Aquanta’s report of how much power it’s using, but I just can’t believe your HWH never turns off. There’s obviously a discrepancy somewhere, and I would lean towards Sense being incorrect since you don’t have (hot) water all over the floor under your HWH.
e.braun… Sorry to hear about your trouble. I put a Rheem water heater in last fall and right away started monitoring the energy usage. It was what I expected. A fraction of what we were using… Think the tag on the side says less then $100 for the year… Not sure if I missed it or not… Can you give us the model of the heater??? And the mode you are running it in??? The new one we put in is the Performance Platinum. Proterra… Model number XE50T10H45UO… Now… You have a couple of options to set it in… But before I do that… Ours has been using .9 to 3.0 kWh per day depending on how many showers and cloths washing happenings. (that was point nine to three). Ours has the heat pump or the regular heating elements of around 5000 watts… Upper and lower. Now I can’t without some digging show you Sense screens for I am powering this most recently solar. That is why I put it in is for the lower power requirements WHEN used in the heat pump mode. I would have to verify this but around 300 watts 220 for about 20 to 80 minutes for when it is in regen to shut off. Again depending on how much water was used… I have not set it up to use the elements yet. Just the “Energy Saver” mode… Hope this helps for now… And I can help you more if you choose… Later…Gerry
e.braun… Some proof… Hi… Screen shots from the Rheem app… And my Electric co… I put the solar and Rheem HWH in last fall around September October… Note the drop in the usage… My 2 cents… Gerry
I’m doing some more digging about this weird behavior. The Tank is a 2 element electric. Due to space constraints there is no way to put anything else there I would have loved to put a hybrid there as well.
Anyhow I’m still on the hunt for finding out if the things I see are real or not. For now I can see that the totals are working but the adding up part is NonSENSE so to say.
I caught one day now with 109% on the Water Heater… that would actually mean Energy is generated out of nothing but we all know that the Device specific numbers are more made up than anything else. So I usually go with the totals and the realtime. Still investigating!
You don’t happen to have a hot water leak do you? Is the water meter constantly spinning showing it’s filling the water heater all the time and trying to heat it.
This will not (or may, depending on the outcome of the dispute) help e.braun, but anyone who is replacing a water heater might want to consider a tankless solution. Most are gas, which is the only down side since electric is better for the environment but for overall energy savings they are the better way to go. They have the benefit of no energy waste due to heat/cool cycles when no water is used and the availability of unlimited hot water, a must in a household with teenagers. Plus they take up a fraction of the space of a tank and can be mounted on a wall.
Too bad you couldn’t fit a heat pump hot water heater. Really happy with our AO Smith 40 gallon. 2-3 times more efficient than electric resistant & it has 2 4kW elements if you need to make hot water urgently. With a teenager in the house, she’s trained to stop shower as tank is drained. I’d hate to think how long the shower could be with a endless supply on gas or the arguments.
Take a look at https://www.eco2waterheater.com/product-info
LOL, there is a certain Pavlovian logic to your thinking that I can’t argue with. In our case I’m the 20 minute shower taker first thing in the morning so I need to leave some for others and so tankless is the way to go for us.
The Gong show continues… so besides Sense not sensing correctly (this is why I mainly use the realtime power meter and the totals from the bill section and Utility company recordings. Also a good thing is the new Tank has LEDs for each element that allows me to easily confirm then ON/Off state.
Anyhow the “Energy Efficient” new tank seems to be not really as advertised. Compared to our 15 year old one it seems to eat much more power… one thing I found is that In contrast to the description in the manual the Heat setting was NOT at 140 it was cranked up to MAX of 155. I do try now 125, but I still think something is not ok as our old tank was operating at a cooking 140 and it took less total energy.
That will be a tough one to crack and argue. I’m still playing with the idea of building my own monitor/switch system to check on the tank - you gotta have a hobby - right?
easy to test and repeat and test. And historical data clearly proofs it. Also the Water Heater was the only new device we got… 3 days later the energy burn started. Also the Water Heater has a LED for each of the elements when on…
