Question regarding timers for electric water heaters

Follow-up from this old thread: https://www.doityourself.com/forum/e...r-heaters.html

I have an annoying Grey Little Box Water Heater timer. Always running out of hot water on most days of the week. I thought the solution was to keep tripping it back on manually, which was very annoying because of it's location in the garage. Why these things don't have a permanent 'on' switch, I don't know.

This thing probably doesn't save any energy either except at the expensive of the massive amounts of inconvenience of lack of hot water anytime you really need it.

I had to sign up when I read some people defending this horrid device by taking showers every second day. That's nasty! I finally figured out that the way to disable this thing is to remove the trippers inside. Hopefully that's the end of this awful problem.

I hate electric water heather timers! I'm willing to bet it doesn't actually save energy for the average household due to the amount of energy it takes to reheat the cooled water and the water wasted while running waiting for it to warm up from the icy cold.

Nasty single men who stick to an unhygienic schedule of showering every second day to accommodate the water heater time is not an option for most families to save energy.

 

Welcome to the forums.

Not sure what your question is there but unless you have a second water heater electric meter OR have day/night electricity rates..... a timer will save you absolutely nothing.

The only reason to use a timer is to have the electric water heater heat ONLY during the off-peak electric rate.

 

It was here when we bought the house. There is no peak/off-peak rate. It sounds like the prior owners were conned into buying it thinking it will save them money.

 

Thanks for the welcome.

I guess I registered as I was having a problem trying to disable the awful thing, and I was finally able to do so thanks to reading these forums. I just don't understand the people trying to defend the use of the water heater timers, such as taking a shower every second day? Really, who does that???

https://cloudfront.zoro.com/product/..._ywvwfo5oy.JPG

 

Very few I would think and it wouldn't be necessary anyway since these are 24 hour timers and not 48 hour timers. I suspect the previous owner had an entirely different schedule than you and no one was home during the longest period of the day. I believe there may be some slight savings for some people, but the use of a timer is not practical for a family if someone is at home all day every day. Just disable the timer, as you discovered, not a big deal. Also, thanks for the smile.

 

Our local POCO also installs/finances water heaters and they always install a timer on the tanks supposedly to keep them from coming on during peak usage. They also offer to install them for free on any water heater ..... not that I would even consider it! Perhaps it was one of those types of deals. Never heard of anyone being limited to a shower every other day

 

In my experience those only cut power on peak days.

A timer installed by a previous owner still should not limit you to a shower every other day. That sounds like a recovery issue caused by low voltage or improper time programming.

 

Who showers every second day to accommodate a water heater timer?? Read the link to the prior thread in my original post.

 

Again, there is no peak/off-peak power rates in my area. So it further defeats the point for a full 4 bedroom/3 bath house.

The things causes massive inconvenience and saves basically no money. Thank heavens for this forum so I could learn how I could disable the crappy thing instead of having to trip it manually each time. It saved us hundreds of dollars for calling a plumber.