Hello @klinquist,
I just installed this with a built-in recirculating pump. Have you thought of adding this to your driver?
Is the recirc pump controlled with simply on/off, or is there more to it?
EDIT: Yes it is, but there are also different modes as well. I can set the mode and it would be remembered between turning on and off the recirculating pump, so I wanted to just control the pump's on /off.
Here are pics from the EcoNet cloud app.
I’ll look up the description for each and add it below.
When recirculating pump is turned on, you must change it from "None", to one of these options.
I have been using the "Timer Perf" (Performance Mode). Unfortunately, that runs all day, whether the girls are home or not. If I could turn on /off the recirculating pump with a timer in Hubitat, that would be ideal. The schedule based option is not very granular. It's on or off 4 times a day with the heater itself. I'd like the recirculating pump to be off all day, except when the girls are using their bathroom, as they shower during specific times of the day (which everyone in the house was trained to do with the "Power Vent" NG 50gal. Bradford this replaced).
Almost sounds like you want On-demand from the Rheem perspective, and then sending the demand signal based on motion in the bathroom around the right time.
Yes and no... The girls have a "Jack and Jill" bathroom. They get up and go into the shower from their respective bedroom. The motion detector (which Rheem does sell) for the recirculating pump would not have had enough time to get hot water to the tub/shower in time and they let the water run while they do other things (they get distracted, so it will run much longer than needed). Also, when they're in their for 30 or more minutes doing makeup or fixing their hair, I don't want this running. This is why I'd like to start /stop on a schedule and "on-Demand".
We trigger our circ pump based on predictive events…for example, getting out of bed after being in it for awhile or somebody doing the dishes.
For sure there are false positives, but the pump runs way way less than 24/7 now.
I agree, but if it were scheduled and you've trained your household to use that schedule, it would definitely be more cost effective.
Literally LOL. I’m picturing telling my wife and kids that we’re going to schedule bath and shower time. That would not go well. Props to you!
Everyone already had a schedule (and so does yours, they just don't know it), I just had to get them to stick to it. The girls always showered at night before bed, between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM. That made their two hour schedule easy. My son, wife and I all get our showers in the morning between 6:00 AM and 9:00 AM. The weekends had a more liberal schedule, but this was a cost savings of more than $60 a month on our NG bill.
So, I ran Romax from our laundry room down to the basement outlet the "NG Power Vent Bradford" is on and put a ZWAVE switch in the laundry room with a timer via Hubitat. For any off hour need, anyone could turn it on or off as needed.
As a part of my "Go Green" initiative (basically I bribed my children and wife who dreamed of going to Disney), that would pay for our trip to Disney, so everyone was on board.
When the hot was heater was off schedule, there was still a tank full of hot water (wrapped in R14 insulation) that gave hot-warm water for anyone that needed it, for a few more hours. Also, it only takes about 20 min. to heat the tank back up, if you had to take an off-schedule shower. The dishwasher and our HE3 Kenmore clothes washer heat their own water (my wife washes our clothes in cold water, so it really didn't matter), so the water heater was not needed for them. With that, CFL lights (and the few LEDs that were coming out at the time), timers on all the switches and outlets with "Vampire" electrical draw (shutting off the TVs and stereo) on a schedule after 11:30 PM, I was able to save enough to take the kids to Disney in less than 18 months.
This is the new setup.
I could just hook it up to the bottom outlet in the pictured receptacle (that’s the one controlled by Hubitat), but I’m not sure how well this unit will take being completely powered on and off. There are a lot more PCBs in this and heating them up and cooling them down may start to break connections.
LOL, I just noticed in this pic that I forgot to put the leak detector wire back to the floor. At that height, there'll need to be 3 feet of water in the basement before it alarms.
Though I do not have the return pipe setup for recirculation, this crossover valve was a part of this complete package, that uses the cold water side for return, for use when you don't have the third pipe design. I wish I would have known this was possible years ago. It would have saved me a lot of wasted water in the girls bathroom.
That is some ninja tactics there!
Whatever works
LOL!
I noticed I was getting this in the logs
All I had to do was open the Rheem EcoNet Integration app on my HE and hit next. I didn't even need to re-enter my password for Rheem or anything. Is there a way I could easily automate this? Like using the lost connection as a trigger, waiting 5 minutes, and if the connection is still lost use a custom command to refresh the MQTT connection?