Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryland
it sounds like you might have the thermostat set higher then you need it if you are able to turn your hot water down on your shower, turning that temp down will save money as it's not getting as hot, it will also protect your kid from getting burned by to hot of water.
there are alot of water heater timers out there, mine runs on a 24 hour program so it treats every day of the week exactly the same, there are 7 day timers that let you change the heating times each day of the week, the most expensive timer I've seen has a temp sensor on the water heater and so it over rides the stock thermostat and lets it simply be a back up, that timer I think can both be programed and appeared to be self learning to throttle back by learning your use patterns.
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How much is that smart control? Does it use contactors or is it solid state? Contactors are actually more efficient than triac or SCR solid state but require maintenance. MOSFET solid state control can have efficiency comparable to that of a contactor and also allow for PWM control, but I don't think any products on the market use that.
I think a DIY solution might be the way to go.The contactors themselves are cheap and so are the other parts. And by basing it around an open source platform like the Arduino, the users can customize it to their needs.
Yes, the thermostat is set high so it acts as a safety control. It will never switch off if everything's working right as the microcontroller will stop it from going above a setpoint.