A cheaper way to heat your tank.

I brought home my inferred temperature gun and took a few readings. I turned up the Ranco 1 degree and found the pump took 3 minutes to raise the temp in my 400g system. The pex that delivers the hot water was 130 degrees, the pex returning water was at 110 degrees. The PVC line from the pump was at 125 degrees.

 

wow i was just thinkn about how to do this this afternoon lol great idea i may try this on my next build wen i have my own place

 

So what are the safety features you have? Do you have a controller besides the Ranco? If you have a 80F tank, then if the Ranco failed to operate, then your tank would be 100F in 30 minutes.

 

So what are the safety features you have? Do you have a controller besides the Ranco? If you have a 80F tank, then if the Ranco failed to operate, then your tank would be 100F in 60 minutes.

 

I have only the Ranco. I will get another and run it as a redundant.

 

There is a whole host of reasons to get a controller.... one of the biggest is temp control. Plenty of stroies of heaters cooking tanks... the Ranco is a good solution besides a controller, but a controller gives a ton of other uses too.

For this setup, you have a attached a ton of BTUs to your tank, the consequenses of which would be devistating in a short period of time. You could have a controller stop the hot water pump, then stop the recirc pump, then stop the return pump if temp continued to rise without stopping. You would have several layers of protection. The new Apex even has fail safe positions for all the relays on loss of comunication. You can even hook up wet floor sensors and auto shut off valves.

 

I have installed the new counter and it looks like the pump has switched on 23 times in the first 24 hours. The pump runs for 2 minutes. I have the Ranco set at a 1 degree differential. It would have been nice if I would have used the counter on my electric heaters.

 

First electric bill came in. It reflects about 50% with the electric heaters. It went from $270.00 to $190.00. Now we wait for the gas bill to show up. The water heater pump has turned on about 125 times since installation. I would expect that to be higher but the house has been warm. We have had the windows open for the past 3 weeks. Some days the pump will circulate water 4 times when the house is at or above 80 degrees. Yes the house can heat above 80 degrees and the tank will hold at 77. This is the benefit of having the Sump in the basement.

 

We just received the gas bill. I know that we did not use the house heater in the past two months but cannot explain why my bill is lower than the earlier mont

 

check the per therm cost of the gas, abundent Natural gas reserves have kept the cost low for the last three years or so do the disappointment of many investors