Can my Aqua-Hot pull from electricity first?
I've got a big Oasis hydronic heating system on my coach and when I take long showers, I have to turn on the diesel burners. Ideally, I'd love to just leave the diesel burners on, however, I don't li...
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Basically the electric elements should be warming the water to about 165F - perhaps 175F. You might have one bad element, or a tripped high temp limit, or something, so both are not working.
Normally they should be 1,400 watts each if 120 volts is applied. That is about 10 - 12 amps at 120 volts. If you know someone with a clamp on amp meter, it can measure the amperage when you are using hot water, and make sure that both elements are coming on.
Each element at 1,400 watts would be about 4,500 Btu's per hour. By heating a 20 gallon water tank, it would be able to hold about 160 pounds of water and at 100F temp rise 16,000 Btu's of heat.
This would be plenty of heat to warm the incoming 50F water to 120F (70F rise) to heat about 15 gallons of water. After that, the electric elements would both turn on, and should warm the water tank.
The 60,000 Btu diesel fired burner can make up any additional heat that you might require. So you can see that the electric element each are only 4,500 - 5,200 Btu's (depending on the wattage rating and input voltage), while the diesel burner is about 10X larger Btu rating. Losing the heat from one element will cut the heat output on electric in half, and this can happen if the engine water temp got the tank warm enough to trip the high temperature limits on the electric heater elements. It is a matter of pushing a simple reset to get the non-working element back into service.
What I would be doing if I had a electric heat element in my water heater is run it on gas only while taking a shower. Then let the electric elements reheat the tank of water when I don't care if it takes 2 hours to warm the water.
Have fun camping!
Fred.
Normally they should be 1,400 watts each if 120 volts is applied. That is about 10 - 12 amps at 120 volts. If you know someone with a clamp on amp meter, it can measure the amperage when you are using hot water, and make sure that both elements are coming on.
Each element at 1,400 watts would be about 4,500 Btu's per hour. By heating a 20 gallon water tank, it would be able to hold about 160 pounds of water and at 100F temp rise 16,000 Btu's of heat.
This would be plenty of heat to warm the incoming 50F water to 120F (70F rise) to heat about 15 gallons of water. After that, the electric elements would both turn on, and should warm the water tank.
The 60,000 Btu diesel fired burner can make up any additional heat that you might require. So you can see that the electric element each are only 4,500 - 5,200 Btu's (depending on the wattage rating and input voltage), while the diesel burner is about 10X larger Btu rating. Losing the heat from one element will cut the heat output on electric in half, and this can happen if the engine water temp got the tank warm enough to trip the high temperature limits on the electric heater elements. It is a matter of pushing a simple reset to get the non-working element back into service.
What I would be doing if I had a electric heat element in my water heater is run it on gas only while taking a shower. Then let the electric elements reheat the tank of water when I don't care if it takes 2 hours to warm the water.
Have fun camping!
Fred.
