Here is a Hubitat App and Driver that works with my Rheem Econet Hybrid Water Heater.
If you want to connect to an electric water heater or a furnace the driver will need modifications for the different capabilities.
OMG this is amazing Thank you
1 Like
Not to be the bearer of bad news.. but I found that this app caused noticeable slowdown on my hub. Is there anything I could help to provide to maybe figure out why?
Hi, I have not noticed any slow downs on my hub but I have been using this for a long time and if it has slowed over time I may not have noticed.
I installed this the other and love it. I haven't had any issues at all.
Just replaced a clunky natural gas water heater with a Rheem 50 gal hybrid. App and driver seem to work great! One of my favorite uses for smart home tech is energy efficiency, and this is a big part of that.
Thought I would ask for clarification, though I can probably figure this out by switching water heater state once it's up and running: which of the many commands in the device settings will trigger vacation mode?
I don't believe I could get vacation mode to work. When my presence is gone, I turn off the water heater, so it isn't needed.
1 Like
I was curious what vacation mode actually does, apparently it sets the thermostat to 50 degrees to prevent freezing.
So that's exactly what I'll do for my vacation mode in HE. Easy enough. Curious - is there any use for having access to fan controls, set schedule, or update device data? Perhaps set schedule (if we can find out how to use it), but the others seem potentially risky to have access to. Admittedly saying this with full ignorance of how they could affect the water heater.
I'll also note that the driver has no noticeable impact on HE. I could see making the case that it seems to connect to Econet too frequently, but perhaps that doesn't really matter. I very much appreciate that you took the time to make this driver, it's a great addition to HE.
Apparently it's just me then. Oh well. I can go without it connected to HE.
I'm playing with dropping the temperature when I'm not home. Normally I keep it at 120, but when I'm gone at work it's set to 100. Has anyone done any research into the optimal settings? What temp is the best to lower it to and still see savings when you have to heat the water back up?
I have not, but I drop my after 9 pm and during the day after 7 am.
Bring it back up at 5 am and 3 pm.
It is off when away.
I have been mulling over the same idea. We run on heat pump only mode, so during the summer, the water heater will be most efficient when the indoor air temperature is highest, and that would be right before the AC begins the morning and afternoon recovery. Here's what I'm thinking:
-When the bathroom fan kicks on for the last shower of the morning (via humidity with Zooz multsensor), drop water heater temp by maybe 10-15 degrees. This should give just enough hot water to finish the shower without the water heater trying to recover to the normal setpoint
-If mode changes to away within the next hour, set temp to 100. Otherwise if staying home, go back to normal setpoint
-When HVAC begins its afternoon recovery, or at a time corresponding to when we return home or the inside air temp is highest, return water heater to normal setpoint
-Possibly do the same at night, though most of our hot water use is in the morning and I don't want to risk a failure to recover before AM showers.
I think the same idea could be transferred to the winter when heating the house with natural gas, but likely running at different times. Would also want to make sure this doesn't needlessly short-cycle the compressor, and would have to evaluate if heat pump mode is actually more efficient in the winter than the normal high efficiency mode.
Speaking of that, it looks like this driver does not work to change modes (heat pump, efficiency, high demand). Anyone else give this a shot?
I couldn't get the modes to change either, but I didn't know if it was something I was doing or some other error. Hubitat's Dashboard also makes it hard as the water heater modes don't align with the HVAC modes.
I wouldn't use the scheduling daily like you, but what I would like to do is set water heater mode by outside temperature and/or season. I only switch modes a few times a year, but when I was on Wink Hub, I used to schedule "High Demand" on Saturday for laundry, and back to "Heat Pump" mode if it was warm outside, or "Energy Saver" mode if it was during winter.
I hope I don't offend brianspranger by posting this here. He and I have found an issue with this driver (not his fault). Apparently there are more than one version of this water heater and they use different commands for the heating modes. I love it when companies do this stupid stuff that is done for no apparent reason.
- Brianspranger's water heater and likewise his driver code want to see "Heat Pump Only" and "Electric-Only" for those modes.
- My water heater version needs "heat pump" and "electric" commands for those modes.
- The other modes (off, energy saver, and high demand) are the same between models.
To make this code work with the (presumably newer) water heaters, you simply need to change the mode names in the driver code from "Electric-Only" to "Electric" everywhere you find it. I think there were about 4-5 places. Same goes for "Heat Pump Only" that gets renamed "Heat Pump" I left the capitalization, word spacing, everything as written, just erase the extra "only or "-only".
It isn't a big deal once you are aware of it, but it was strange because things somewhat worked enough to make it appear everything was fine. so it took me a while to figure out something was up. For reference, my water heater is a "Heat Pump Water Heater Gen 4", but I am not sure what all models this code modification applies to. My heater reports the following.
- model number: 10E50-HP4D
- software Version: WH-HPW4-H2-01-10
I thank brianspranger for his time in helping me to track this down. Thanks again for this code, it will be very helpful to automate this water heater.
1 Like
No offense here.
I have been thinking about this and if I get some time I think I can make the driver handle the two different naming schemes.
I also need to play with a dashboard to see if I can get it to work properly.
Wow great work both of you! I'll make the changes and test it out later today 
Would you consider doing something for a furnace? I have a furnace/AC hooked up to econet. Would love to connect it to HE.
I believe someone already has. It might be over at Smart things.
It is easy to adapt from ST to Hubitat
That's ok. I prefer to use something by someone I know. I'm not experienced enough to dabble and feel comfortable messing with my heater and ac. Eventually something will come in that I can use.
I just loaded this and connected it to my Sharptools dashboard. Very cool, and shows everything I wanted. Thanks for the app and driver!
It was the first 3rd party app and driver I've loaded, and it was easier than I expected.
2 Likes
