new electronic gas water heater thermostats

Raylo · 01-23-2008, 04:50 AM

Has anyone had any experience with these? Sears and Whirlpool (and maybe others?) offer them on their 12-year gas WHs'. I am getting close to buying a new WH and am thinking that these would be better at regulating the temp than the old style bi-metal thermostats. I am especially interested because my current (and first ever) gas WH has never been able to maintain what I think is a reasonable control band. The temp at a local tap is 132 just after the burner cycles off, but the burner doesn't cycle on until it drops to 105, again as measured at the local tap. This assures that I can't get a hot shower up through 3 floors of copper pipe in the morning unless I check the temp to see if I need to run enough water out to kick the WH on.

And yes, I have blown the unit down on occassion. And at one point I even pulled out the dip tube to make sure that it was intact and not allowing the cold water to short circuit to the WH hot water outlet. It was fine.

All in all a major PITA. But the unit is 13 years old and probaby ready to be replaced anyway.

**speedster123** · 01-25-2008, 04:32 AM

Quote:

But the unit is 13 years old and probaby ready to be replaced anyway

your doing yourself good either way, your gas valve probe is gunked up or the valve itself is tired.
do you lose your power for any significant amounts of time?

Raylo · 01-25-2008, 12:07 PM

Power loss is not an issue. The new electronic WH controllers are self powered off the thermocouple just like the old style gas valves. I assume they have a similar hold-open function that senses the pilot light via a thermocouple, but the engineers must be getting good at designing low power circuitry so that they can run the IC board off that as well. Here is a link to the Sears 50 gal unit with this control. It's abour $40 more than the similar one with conventional control.

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...+Water+Heaters

01-23-2008, 04:50 AM	#1 (permalink)
Raylo Registered User Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Maryland, USA Posts: 215 OS: XP Desktop, Vista HP Notebook, XP Notebook	new electronic gas water heater thermostats Has anyone had any experience with these? Sears and Whirlpool (and maybe others?) offer them on their 12-year gas WHs'. I am getting close to buying a new WH and am thinking that these would be better at regulating the temp than the old style bi-metal thermostats. I am especially interested because my current (and first ever) gas WH has never been able to maintain what I think is a reasonable control band. The temp at a local tap is 132 just after the burner cycles off, but the burner doesn't cycle on until it drops to 105, again as measured at the local tap. This assures that I can't get a hot shower up through 3 floors of copper pipe in the morning unless I check the temp to see if I need to run enough water out to kick the WH on. And yes, I have blown the unit down on occassion. And at one point I even pulled out the dip tube to make sure that it was intact and not allowing the cold water to short circuit to the WH hot water outlet. It was fine. All in all a major PITA. But the unit is 13 years old and probaby ready to be replaced anyway.

01-25-2008, 12:07 PM	#3 (permalink)
Raylo Registered User Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Maryland, USA Posts: 215 OS: XP Desktop, Vista HP Notebook, XP Notebook	Re: new electronic gas water heater thermostats Power loss is not an issue. The new electronic WH controllers are self powered off the thermocouple just like the old style gas valves. I assume they have a similar hold-open function that senses the pilot light via a thermocouple, but the engineers must be getting good at designing low power circuitry so that they can run the IC board off that as well. Here is a link to the Sears 50 gal unit with this control. It's abour $40 more than the similar one with conventional control. http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...+Water+Heaters Last edited by Raylo : 01-25-2008 at 12:09 PM.