On 2021/04/27 at 7:36 PM, HennieJH said:

Where can one buy these low power geyser elements?

Most hardware stores should have them.

Thanks, will check.

On 2021/04/22 at 3:14 PM, Tinuva said:

And a few minutes later I received a call from builders they received the qualitel plugs today, and will deliver for me tomorrow.

Unfortunately they are not reflashable with Tasmota but have got them working using the Tuya plugin for NodeRed.

20 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

Unfortunately they are not reflashable with Tasmota but have got them working using the Tuya plugin for NodeRed.

Yeah that was a big bummer. I am going to order ESP boards from Aliexpress and flash them with tasmota and replace them into my 4x new Qualitel plugs. Before I will be able to do that, need to buy new finer soldering points for my soldering iron. Will only start to use them once I have them on Tasmota.

On 2021/05/07 at 10:44 AM, Tinuva said:

Yeah that was a big bummer. I am going to order ESP boards from Aliexpress and flash them with tasmota and replace them into my 4x new Qualitel plugs. Before I will be able to do that, need to buy new finer soldering points for my soldering iron. Will only start to use them once I have them on Tasmota.

Am using mine with the Tuya plugin for Node Red, they seem to work fine but would have prefered to use Tasmota as well. 

Too much PT to change everything.

 

See it became a home automation topic now 🙂

• Agree with the smaller element in the geyser.
  I maintain 400W to 550W during night time, without having a timer on geyser. (it has a blanket, and inside greenhouse... so I guess its not getting cold), We just 2, but when someone bath, we share the water... else we shower.
• Heaters are managed like a dictator.
• Everything LED
• Dishwasher, AirCon., Washing, Drying,  Fridge / Freezer, even oven is INVERTER type, low energy.
  (Oven is Siemens, it uses normal 16A plug, stove top is gas,
  Dishwasher only have water water line, so that internal heating is not required)
• Espresso machine (screw the energy... everyone should have a little pleasure)
• PC, switch it off when done (my media server and NVR is on a intel NUC - it uses less power than PC)
  
  And the last one, that may have a huge response. Learn form the people in Europe. If you work from home, do not sweat a lot, and wipe your ass thoroughly, there is no need to have long showers each night 🙂 For the younger crowd.... this will also teach you not to have sex 10 x a day 🙂

On 2021/02/10 at 5:13 PM, Paul Greeff said:

Thanks Meerkat. I'll investigate all options. As long as my folks still get to enjoy the comfort of hot water in winter. If it means paying for a bit of juice from Eskom, then so be it.

I have had a 200L solar geyser for 3 years now, in summer it is great, I get well over 70 degrees, barring the rainy days, but in winter it sucks, I have even tilted the tubes up to get the best angle towards the sun.

Added to that there are 3 long haired fems in the house, who don't understand the concept of a 6 minute shower, they learn the "cold" way, if you get my meaning.

I also have a gas geyser servicing the kitchen and guest bathroom (shower), and I use it everyday ;-) , besides the odd day when the wind blows in the wrong direction and blows the "flame" out it works great.

I would highly recommend a gas geyser, as long as it is outside but also sheltered, you will not have any problems. 

On 2021/04/09 at 12:47 AM, Achmat said:

I also have a cottage I'm renting out thats running from my inverter. First thing I did before getting the tenants was to put in a gas stove and oven. They have a 30l under counter geyser for their shower and kitchen which seems to work fine instead of the on demand hot water systems. My daily usage including my tenants is 35kwh per day. I also installed a private prepaid meter for them so they are now much more aware of their electricity usage. 

Cooking on gas works out better as you don't need to wait for a plate to get hot. Pots and pans are hot enough to cook fairly quickly instead of waiting for an electric stove to heat up so you also end up wasting less time and heat when cooking with gas. 

Hi please assist me in this regards i.e having a tenant set-up....really baffled what is wrong with my set-up:

I have a goodwe inverter and pylon batteries for night use.

I recently rented out my cottage and had the electrician install a prepaid meter that essentially runs off my mains.

The issue I have picked up now is that the cottage is being supplied from my battery at night.

The funny thing though is, when there is load shedding the cottage has no power and does not utilise my battery. It only utilises my battery when there is Grid power.

 

Can anybody advise what could be wrong wit my set up? Pretty please.....my battery is now drained by 10pm because the tenant is using a heater:(

34 minutes ago, xinath said:

Hi please assist me in this regards i.e having a tenant set-up....really baffled what is wrong with my set-up:

I have a goodwe inverter and pylon batteries for night use.

I recently rented out my cottage and had the electrician install a prepaid meter that essentially runs off my mains.

The issue I have picked up now is that the cottage is being supplied from my battery at night.

The funny thing though is, when there is load shedding the cottage has no power and does not utilise my battery. It only utilises my battery when there is Grid power.

 

Can anybody advise what could be wrong wit my set up? Pretty please.....my battery is now drained by 10pm because the tenant is using a heater:(

Not familiar with that inverter but I'm assuming there is a CT sensor installed. 

You can fix this easily by having the CT sensor installed before your DB that supplies the main house. 

Grid -> main DB -> cottage DB -CT->Main house DB->inverter -> essential loads. 

The inverter will then limit supply to only the main DB and not to the cottage. 

12 minutes ago, Achmat said:

Not familiar with that inverter but I'm assuming there is a CT sensor installed. 

You can fix this easily by having the CT sensor installed before your DB that supplies the main house. 

Grid -> main DB -> cottage DB -CT->Main house DB->inverter -> essential loads. 

The inverter will then limit supply to only the main DB and not to the cottage. 

thank a mil will look into this and advise once done

On 2021/04/16 at 9:20 AM, Tinuva said:

This is actually an interesting point.

I recently started buying up BNETA plugs to add power metering on as many places as possible in my house. Have 2 so far, waiting of another 4 to ship, and might need another 2-3 depending.

For now, the Sonoff POW R2 is on the Fridge, but more interesting, look at my office-feed for my own pc. Will get one for wife's office side later.

Above you can see it average at 60-70W with 2 Dell LED monitors, a 2015 MBP 13" a 5port gigabit switch and a polycom voip phone.
If I turn off 1 monitor, it goes to average of 50-60W.
If I turn off both monitors, it goes down to 20-30W.
If the laptop is unplugged from the charger as well, then it will be around 10-12W for the switch + voip phone.

In the past, I at times, forget to turn of the monitors and they run a screensaver the whole night.
So now, as soon as my alarm system is armed, the plug turns all of this off, which is a 20-70W saving as you can see in the above graph, around 9:30PM to 7:00AM.

 

This is the fridge graph. I am really impressed, most of the time it only runs at 88-91W usage. There is a part where it ran at 300W which I think is part of the cycle, because I only plugged this in yesterday. It does have a very short spike to about 570W.

 

This is the main bedroom aircon. Currently it is cool enough at night to only use it in fan mode, which saves a lot of power. It is only on the really super duper host nights in Dec/Jan/Feb we need it in cooling mode.

I bought a Bneta Plug, but I get very basic info from the TUYA app. What software are you using to get such detailed energy usage stats?

Thats Home assistant, plug integrated via tasmota or tuya or esphime or ewlink or or or or

Edited July 17, 20214 yr by Dylan

On 2021/07/15 at 12:21 PM, tRh said:

I bought a Bneta Plug, but I get very basic info from the TUYA app. What software are you using to get such detailed energy usage stats?

I flashed the plug with Tasmota (newer plugs you need to replace the chip sadly).

With Tasmota the readings are far more accurate as you can tweak it with rules.

Even if load the plug as in using the tuya integration into Home Assistant, it only updates once every 30 to 60 minutes.

I was looking for some info on my Kwikot heat pump recently, on the Kwikot site they say that if you want to reduce the amount of power that your geyser uses, and don't want to replace anything then

1) Turn the thermostat down (they say 60, we have 55 in our house and find that satisfactory and we don't have to blend in any cold)

2) Take showers rather than baths

3) Take short showers

They think timers don't make much difference in terms of consumption because when the timer does kick in the water is colder and takes more heating. They think blankets aren't necessary on new, SABS compliant geysers.

You can also try fitting water saving shower heads. There are lots of rubbishy ones around, but good ones (eg RTS) have some clever innards that generate multiple small but powerful jets of water whilst restricting flow. That doesn't directly affect the geyser, but it means you let less hot water out of it.

These are the things from which domestic sulks may arise.  I decided to give an RTS head a go a while back and the wife actually found it superior to anything we'd had before. So I bought another for the 2nd shower. They lasted us about 15 years and last year I replaced them. The new ones can be set on a really miserly setting.

They come with a special key for fitting them, because in Germany people used to nick them from the B&Bs, so they were modified so that a regular spanner is no good and vice grips will mangle them.

The fitting with the key also means that unless you have the key or are willing to leave a visibly mangled shower head as evidence you can't change it from the aforementioned miserly setting to merely restrictive.

 

Edited July 26, 20214 yr by Bobster

On 2021/07/26 at 8:07 AM, Bobster said:

heat pump recently

Heat pump water heater is a great alternative of electric/gas heater.

According to a research done by Sustainability Victoria (a government agency), a Victorian household (a family of 4 people) can slash their energy bills on water heating from $12,265 to just $3,190 (over the 10 years) if they replace electric/gas water heater with heat pump based water heater.

 

Edited March 15, 20233 yr by pawanranta

On 2021/07/26 at 5:07 PM, Bobster said:

They think timers don't make much difference in terms of consumption because when the timer does kick in the water is colder and takes more heating. They think blankets aren't necessary on new, SABS compliant geysers.

You can also try fitting water saving shower heads. There are lots of rubbishy ones around, but good ones (eg RTS) have some clever innards that generate multiple small but powerful jets of water whilst restricting flow. That doesn't directly affect the geyser, but it means you let less hot water out of it.

Saving energy everyone jumps to the answer of adding a timer but few mention saving water.
Adding a timer is like using a diet pill that comes with instructions to eat less and exercise more.

It this the RST shower head you talking about? 
http://www.rstshowerhead.co.za/#

I have bought a box full of Ellies shower heads which are claimed to use 10l/min

1 minute ago, Pietpower said:

Saving energy everyone jumps to the answer of adding a timer but few mention saving water.

Adding a timer is like using a diet pill that comes with instructions to eat less and exercise more.

It this the RST shower head you talking about? 
http://www.rstshowerhead.co.za/#

Yes. Those are the ones. It gives really nice, strong jets of water - if that's your thing. Plus they reduce your usage. This affects your water bill, and since less is taken from the geyser it means the geyser has to do less work.

There are of course other reasons for saving water. I was inspired by the mayor of Mexico City, who, during a drought, allowed himself to be filmed having a shower so that he could set an example. He turned on the water, got himself wet all over, turned the water off, soaped up, scrubbed, then turned on the water again to rinse. 

That way of taking a shower is one of those cases where you can reduce your own impact on the planet's resources AND reduce the impact on your wallet. 

 

1 minute ago, Pietpower said:

I have bought a box full of Ellies shower heads which are claimed to use 10l/min

 

10 minutes ago, Pietpower said:

I have bought a box full of Ellies shower heads which are claimed to use 10l/min

There's several such around. The RTS gives, for me, a more satisfying shower. Even if water saving wasn't a box I wanted to check, I'd still use the RTS.

The local franchise is now some guy operating from home. All business done via email or whatsapp. Delivery to PostNet. He's rock solid, and the items come well packaged with instructions and the special key.

4 hours ago, pawanranta said:

Heat pump is a great alternative of electric/gas heater.

According to a research done by Sustainability Victoria (a government agency), a Victorian household (a family of 4 people) can slash their energy bills on water heating from $12,265 to just $3,190 (over the 10 years) if they replace electric/gas water heater with heat pump based water heater.

 

It's one of those solutions where you have to pay money up front to save in the long run. But then so is converting to a solar geyser.

The plus for me is that I can get away with running it on the backed up circuits. It draws about 1.2kw for (this morning) 50 minutes to heat the geyser to 55 C.

Edited April 26, 20224 yr by Bobster
mangled grammar

I have a heatpump. It made a significant dent in the bill. It is switched on once a day for 2 showers. Consumption for the heatpump last month (March) was roughly 33KWh

What I have noticed is that my 150l geyser leaks about 2-2.5KWh of energy per day. I think it is a class D geyser. I have R1 rated insulation (25mm thick) on all the pipes as I thought this would solve the issue. If you ever have to repace a geyser, insist on a class B geyser. They only leak about 1.4KWh per day. Just calculating losses over a year quickly adds up. Please note that the loses does not include actual hot water usage, that still needs to be added.

My recommendations: If you have a large family and/or they use lots of hot water, a heatpump will save a lot of money. It will pay for itself in 2-3 years and should last for 10 years. If you use very little water, then a gas geyser is the way to go. It will use less than the 1.4KWh (that a geyser loses in a day).

If you have solar panels then you will have to rethink the equation completely. With excess power there are many ways to solve a problem.

 

 

 

Edited April 26, 20224 yr by iiznh

On 2022/04/26 at 6:43 PM, Bobster said:

It's one of those solutions where you have to pay money up front to save in the long run

Here in Victoria, we are entitled to received rebates for replacing old electric resistance and gas-fired water heaters with heat pump water heaters. Moreover, hot Victorian climate contributes to enhancing the heat pump efficiency.

Edited November 13, 20241 yr by pawanranta
Updated relevant info and link.

I have used the Shelly switches. They are really small, the "Plus" version can monitor power consumption and you can remotely control the devices. They have an app but also can be integrated to HA. Removes the guesswork in determining what ate you battery.

Haven't yet build the automation to kills certain devices when their is load shedding - or the battery is struggling.

On 2021/02/11 at 1:59 PM, Tinuva said:

I have 2 geysers in the house, both get used at different times. Also don't have solar yet so that hasn't changed the way I schedule them. Mostly, they set to reduce power usage to save money.

Main bedroom geyser goes on around 4am for 60minutes monday to saturday. On sunday it goes on around 4am for 5 hours.
Usage for this geyser, is 2 showers from 5am in the morning.

Geyser in front of house, goes on around 3:30pm for 60minutes monday to saturday. On sunday it goes on around 4am for 5 hours.
Usage for this geyser, is baby getting a bath around 5-6pm and also it serves the hot water tape in the kitchen used sometimes for anything not getting washed in the dish washer.

Doing this has reduced the power bill by about 10-15% a month. Not a lot, but also not nothing.

1 hour a day is all you need, but once a week you should run it for 5 hours to ensure you don't have to deal with legionnaires disease.

Once I have my solar panels installed, will go down to a 1.5 or 2kW element so that solar can help with additional savings. Will have to rethink the morning showers.

 

Quick one. Reducing the size (kw) of your element, won’t that mean you would need to run the element for longer to get the water heated to the required temp?

1 hour ago, Raiden2912 said:

Quick one. Reducing the size (kw) of your element, won’t that mean you would need to run the element for longer to get the water heated to the required temp?

Energy use will be largely the same - probably only fractionally higher with a smaller element.

Smaller elements have some advantages.

They are easier to run off solar inverters without complex automation or compromises.

Wire losses will be lower (but this will only really make a difference if original wire size was absolute minimum legal size).

Main disadvantage of smaller elements is higher losses - you need to start heating earlier, and leak heat over a longer period (although even this is a small loss on modern SABS approved geysers).