Brian,
You missed the boat on this one. Since you already have the boiler, the most efficient, cost effective way to make domestic hot water is with an indirect hot water maker. Plumbed into the boiler as an additional zone. Water to water heat exchange, virtually endless hot water supply, incredibly good insulation (less than one degree heat loss per hour on our 40 gallon), negligible effect on oil consumption.

Jim

Yes, I considered it.........but the cost and time to get it installed wasn't available. The electric unit was cheap and the tenants pay the electricity.

I'm just shocked at the expense of it.

I could easily retrofit the heater to function as an indirect tank back to the coil. It's already plumbed from the coil so that the coil can operate in series with it.

Plantman
You should have your tech install a heat recovery system from your a/c system.
Hot gas expelled from the a/c unit are piped to the hot water tank.
All the hot water you can handle.I turn off the water heater during the summer months.
Living here in fla. is the ideal place to have one installed .
My unit was installed when i bought the house.
look into this it will help you out
Gunny

For the immediate future, the most cost effective fix is replacing the elements, I know one is drawing way too much power. .

Seems like an easy remove and replace. Are these available at a home depot?

I tried a search on their site and found nothing! Are they standard or should I remove one and bring with? They are both 4500 watt elements

Thanks again.

What makes you think that one element is drawing way too much power?

My buddy checked with a meter and one of the elements was drawing upwards of 17 watt or amps, I don't know which. I read it should be quite a bit lower than that. By comparison, the airhandler was drawing about 2.

The other element was very low if not 0, maybe causing the other one to work more, I have no idea. I figure one is bad, I might as well replace both since they are relatively inexpensive.

.03

In your opening post of the thread, you say that your buddy measured it as 17 A. Other folks in the thread have already commented that they don't think that's particularly high.

I agree with them. It has to draw that sort of current if it's a 4500 W heater and it's operating off of typical 240 V mains.

I'm not saying that you don't have some sort of problem somewhere in your house - but 17 A to your hot water heater doesn't seem like a smoking gun to me.

As an aside, it may be perfectly normal for one element to be running and the other one not to be under some conditions; it depends on how they're set up.

Edited to add: Things are very commonly set up by design such that the two elements are never operating at the same time.

c
Now that we are on the subject. The reason I had my ac and heater checked is that we installed a new high efficiency AC last year, same size as the old one, house is cooling off better than before. Yet month every month the new ac unit has been in, my electric bill is higher than the same months of the previous year with the old ac.

My buddy told me that the water heater could be the main reason. Conflicting reports. All I know is I have one less person living here and my bill keeps going up and up.

I was told by a guy at Home depot the 17 amo was too high. ?????

Ooooopps! I said all that already!:rolleyes:

Have you looked at your records to see if your usage (as in killowatt-hours per month) is actually higher? Or are you paying more per kW-h than you used to? I sure am.

If he said that, then I disagree with him!

The elements in the water heater each have their own thermostats, so it's possible for only one element to be heating.
In your A/C, the air handler is not the big power draw. The big power draw is the compressor. Did your man give you a figure for the draw on the compressor? You could check the label on it for the wattage/amp rating.

He did check the compressor, and said it was within normal limits, I don't recall the number, around 5 amps or less if I am not mistaken.

Here is my usage in KWH per month going backwards from this month. I definitly am using more than before. I believe the unit was changed in around October

May
2385
April
2095
March
1542
February
1525
Jan
2086
Dec
1634
Nov
1670
Oct
2060
Sept
2720
August
2417
July
2540
June
2342
May
2119
April
1781
March
1693
Feb
1687
JAn
1387

My window A/C rated at 5000 btu draws 4.7 amps.

Edit- you should include the monthly average temperatures with your kWhr figures in your last post.

I'll have to get the numbers from my buddy, like I said, I do not recall the figures for the exterior unit.