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I've been seeing TV ads for EcoSmart electric tankless heaters (www.ecosmartus.com) but don't know anyone who has had one installed. I also found out they make an similar device to heat pools, which really interests me because I live in South Florida and our pool is too cold to use for half the year.
Thanks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzz1zlHnmYQ
Search the tankless forums for electric tankless. I personally don't care for gas ones and strongly recommend against the larger electric ones.
Would this system require a larger electric service to your house? Cost vs. other methods?
http://youtu.be/3PtT0K0cr2s
Heating pools with electricity is going to be quite expensive, and the savings from using a tankless electric is also nil- the only reason to go there is capacity- it'll crank out a LOT more hot water per hour than a tank heater will, but at a hefty price, given the large standby losses of a pool on cooler nights.
But in S. FL I'd think cheap unglazed solar panels would be a slam-dunk for pool heating- you could buy the whole system for what it would cost you to heat the thing with electricity in the shoulder seasons for a coupla years. (IIRC FL has cash incentives to go solar on pool heating.)
There are ways of extending the season beyond just pounding more heat in with a tankless at significant expense. There are retrofit desuperheaters for your central AC designed to work for pool heating. You only get the benefit when there's still a daytime cooling load, not so much during the late fall/early spring, but since it improves the cooling performance of your AC in the process it's essentially heating the pool for free (or negative operating expense, since it lowers the cooling bill). With those you're using the thermal mass of the pool as a heat dump for the AC- a 2-birds/one stone kind of deal during the shoulder seasons. (It's a lot easier to make conditioned air by pumping the heat into 70F water than into 90F air, eh?)
Also, a third to half of the heat loss in a typical pool is nighttime sky radiation (more on clear nights than cloudy) and evaporation at the surface. Pool covers cut both substantially, but you still have to dink around with putting them on and taking them off.
Either a desuperheater or pool cover is likely to be a better investment than a electric tankless or solar, but if you have the space, solar pool heaters continue to work well beyond the active cooling season.
I have bought an ecosmart 27 a few months ago and had it installed about 2 months ago. We turned it on for the first time last month and it seemed to be working really well for the first few weeks. However, then, all the sudden it tripped a breaker and it turned out that one of the elements was burnt out. We phoned ecosmart and they would only replace the element at our expense. So, the electrician tried to install the new element today.. however, it did not work. So, he phoned ecosmart and they asked him to send the unit back. We will see how quickly they will replace the unit and whether or not we have the same problems again. The good new is, my electricity bill was $400 (so, this is only about $110 more than usual and we had the pool heater running for about 3 weeks.) So, it does seem to consume less electricity.. the bad news is that the unit that we had was unreliable and broke within the first month of use. I don't know if perhaps we simply got a faulty unit or if there is an inherent problem with all the units. There are not enough people writing about these units that I can find on the web yet. I figure that since I'm unable to find many people complaining about these heaters, then this might mean that most people are happy with them. I will wait and see what the replacement unit does and leave a message about it here in the future just to see. one thing that is sure is that their customer support and technical support is almost non-existent which was very frustrating for the electrician when he was trying to install the unit, etc. If anybody reads this that has had experience with these ecosmart pool heaters, please leave a message whether your experience was good or bad.
Excuse me for asking , just curios and I don't mean to sound stupid or flame .
$400 Hydro bill in Florida ..... is that for one month ?
Tanx Vin.
I hope you sent it back to them certified mail and someone has to SIGN
for the package.......... I would be willing to bet that they will never receive the heater if you dont make them sign fo r it...
The only thing good in that u-tube video is the hot chick with the nice rack...
and those are probably not real either...
Hi I bought the Ecosmart US Smart POOL 18 Electric Pool Heater and is has beeing a pain ... they say any electrician understand the installation manual, but is far from beeing true, the manual is terrible, 3 pictures showing some conections and few instructions is not enogh.
What every body should know is: You need to verify too many little details for this to work properly, and expend a lot of mony to do that, maybe the heater they sell to heat the house water is not that complex but this is complex.
The customer service is null, so bad that they never anwer. I had to post bad review in their facebook account to get their atention, they didnt say this but, the pool heater needs so much electricity so is everything else but economic or smart, "ecosmart heater" JA,
They should tell people you need to power this heater using a direct line form your electric provider, because it can not be sharing your home conections, the power this thing require is so much that use 18kw hour to raise a couple of grades in temperature, also if your installation is far from your pool a #8 cable is not suficient and to make it worst the cable distance make the cable heat so much that burn the plastic so you need #6 or even #4 cable and also a very expensive termomagnetic breakers to suport the heat, this ecosmart heater is nothing more than a resistance inside a metal box that heat water is the same if you put to large spiral metals in your pool making a Electric Resistance Heaters, so be carefull.
They charge that amount of money for this terrible product with the worst customer service, and then you have to expend the same amount in a propper installation.
DO NOT BUY THE "Ecosmart US Smart POOL 18 Electric Pool Heater" SUCKS
I bought one too, and can only say it's a total piece of junk, hasn't worked right from day #1
tech support is very helpfull, sending piles of parts (each take about 2 weeks to arrive) and still isn't working the way it should.
In a colder climate (regularly 0*f and colder) it's a total disaster. Cost me over 2k in plumber and electrician bills and counting.
If anybody has similar experience let's do a class action suit, and get junk like this banned from the north american market !!