apostolakisl

? IDK. Maybe it is the brand. I have Noritz as I mentioned. Maybe it is the water? I would assume my water has a lot of calcium in it as we are all limestone here and the water comes out of a lake reservoir that is filled with rain water. All the creeks running into it are "lined" with limestone as is the lake reservoir. It is highly unlikely that there is any iron in the water as iron is often advertised as a missing ingredient for healthy lawns around here. Anyways, I am very happy with my heaters. They consume zero space as they are fitted between the studs. I have no issues aside from the flame sensor needing to be cleaned. That just took a quick youtube video tutorial to hook me up with the fix. They seem to cost me about $30/mo in propane as a rough estimate based on how much I spend keeping my propane tank filled and the fact that almost all the propane use is hot water. We also have a gas grill, griddle, and kitchen burners. But I suspect their use is a rounding error.

Well I don't know what to tell you, I have none of these problems. And in addition, I just remembered, I had another tankless heater for 11 years at my old office before I moved out. I never did anything to it at all ever. It would be about 21 years old now, not sure if it still is working, but it would have been a very early generation unit. My tankless heaters do not have pilot lights, they have electronic ignition. They have never "blown out" or needed to be drained and rebooted or anything like that. I don't get a lot of 90mph winds, but during Harvey we had several days of 40mph winds and I never missed a hot shower. My home heaters I have flushed twice in 13 years. I have to admit I didn't know I was supposed to flush them and didn't do the first flush till they were 10 years old until my father in law asked me about it (he has tankless as well and is maybe 8 years old). If your water is crap, then it is going to kill any type of heater. Our water is not particularly good with about 250ppm of dissolved solids. Of course the details on which dissolved solids will make a difference and I frankly don't know much about that. Putting a small tank on a tankless heater is not something that I see advertised for sale. Makes no sense to do that as far as I can tell. It only takes about 2 seconds for the water to get hot and a small tank would have the same issues as a recirc pump, lots of cycling. And of course it would have to have a recirc pump to keep the little tank hot. I would love to see a link to "tankless" heater with such a tank. Anyway, at 13 years, my tankless heaters have lasted longer than any tank heater I have ever had. My heatpump unit at my office does have a tank but is a different bird and all being a heat pump. It is about 11 years old. I have never done any service to it. The load on that one is there is no showering at the office. But we do a lot of loads of laundry on the sanitize cycle. I am now going to go knock on some wood.

Just checked the prices on the Elk and Greenfield and wow did they get pricey. I have the WSV original from Elk and I thought it was on the pricey side at $300, but now they are up to around $700.

You just right click the primary node for the KPL in the main tree on the left of the main screen in the admin console and click delete. Then you factory reset as per usual. The you add it back per the normal routine. Put ISY into Insteon linking mode and push the little set button on the device.

During the restore process it would give you a similar error if it failed to write to the device. Your KPL might just be bad, but again, I would try totally deleting the KPL from ISY, then factory reset, then add it back to ISY as if it were a new device.

If the restore progressed without errors, then the PLM must be good. Can you query the device from ISY? You might try completely deleting the device from ISY, factory reset, then re-create the scenes from scratch. Be sure to document all the scenes exactly. I take screen shots of all the scenes to help with that.

I have multiple tankless heaters both at my home and my inlaws. I have a heat pump tanked one at the office. I forget the brand off the top of my head, but the two in my home are both 13 years old and "knock on wood", I have essentially had zero issues. The only issue I did have was the flame sensor on the unit needed to be rubbed down with some steel wool a few months ago as it was no longer detecting the flame as a result of carbon buildup. I have flushed the tanks with vinegar every few years as routine maintenance. The burner fires up very fast, just a couple seconds and it is making hot water. These are mounted on the outside of the house (I live in Texas). They survived the big freeze to 6 degrees two nights in a row we had 2 years ago just fine (I did not lose electricity, if I had, I would have needed to drain them very quickly). The one unit is located on the outside wall just about 8 feet from the one kitchen sink. That sink gets hot water in just a few seconds. Maybe 5 seconds. You can hear the burn come on in less than 1 second when you turn on the hot water and the remaining time is flushing through the water between the sink and the heater. EDIT: My tanks or Noritz. I timed the kitchen sink at 10 seconds which is about 8ft away. The flow rate of that sink is a bit more than 1gpm (3 cups in 10 seconds).

So you don't have a true recirculating system. I have a true recirculatory that has a dedicated loop back to the hot water tank and a pump that runs continuously. You have an on demand system that I very much doubt has a true recirculating loop. It likely pumps the water from the hot line into the cold water line until a temp sensor detects that hot water has arrived at the destination. Or I suppose it could be timed once you know how long that takes. This system will not cycle, it will just run for however many seconds when triggered. Using a motion sensor in the bathroom I would suggest is not the best plan. I enter my master bathroom all the time with no intention of using hot water. There would be many false triggers. A flow sensor which detects that you started flowing hot water and then trips the pump is the best for energy and wear and tear. Though you will not get instant hot water, but the hot water will arrive far faster. For example, you might have a sink that flows at 1gpm and takes 30 seconds to get hot. If you have a pump that flows at 5gpm, the water will now arrive in about 5 seconds.

Yes, of course, all hot water heaters that keep hot water at the standby cycle, no such thing as perfect insulation. But a big tank cycles far less often. You have 50 gallons of water to buffer the rise and fall of temp. In a tankless you only have a few gallons in the pipes and that water is rapidly cooling because of the poor insulation and high surface area to volume ratio.

An iolinc can both control the valve and monitor that the valve properly actuated all in one package. Assuming you use ISY to control the iolinc, you can write a program that checks that the valve physically changed each time it commands the valve to actuate. Should it fail, ISY can notify you. I would suggest that you actuate the valve on a regular basis to confirm it is operating. As I mentioned, my valve is actuated each time I arm my alarm system so the valve is regularly exercised and proper operation is confirmed. EDIT: I just pulled up the wsv instructions. The green status wire is 12v, so to use it with an iolinc you would need it to power a relay which the iolinc monitors via its 5v system.

At least with the Elk valve then, you would need an iolinc or comparable to add it to your HA system. Unfortunately, no wireless system can live up to the failsafe standards of hardwired, but it is better than nothing. Hopefully you do have access to 120vac at the location or you would then also have to contend with battery maintenance and another potential point of failure. The thing with water valves is you mostly never need them. . . except when you need them and then you really need them.

I am aware of the concept. But it defeats the primary purpose of tankless heaters which is that they do not consume any energy except when the user is consuming hot water. I have seen systems that have a flow sensor such that when you start to draw hot water it trips a pump that rapidly pumps out the hot water line into the cold water line to get the hot water to you faster, those are still within the concept. The least efficient place to store hot water is in your pipes. Even if insulated, they have a low r value insulation and extremely high surface area to volume. If you live in the north and are heating your house anyway, I suppose no huge loss. But you also will suffer from a relatively small volume of water that is poorly insulated which will result in constant short cycling of your tankless heater. The life of you heater will be greatly diminished. Furthermore, I suspect that the ignition process is the least efficient use of fuel and you will have lots and lots of ignitions. A big 50 gallon tank heater will have that large volume to buffer the cooling/heating cycle times and thus not short cycle.

Seems totally contrary to the whole concept of a tankless heater. You basically turn the pipes in your walls into a tank that you keep cycling your heater to keep hot.

Only if you are hardwiring the valve back to your Elk.

I don't think you want to use a tankless heater with a recirculation system. The unit will do a lot of cycling. I suspect it would void warranty as well. Perhaps you are just manually using the recirc pump moments before using the hot water, which I suspect would be fine. But having it run for extended lengths of time would not be a good plan.

I have a couple of the Elk valves and they are both a decade plus in service and no issues. Of course they are hard wired only, so you would need to use somethin like an IO link to remotely connect them to your home automation. I have mine hard wired directly to my alarm panels which makes it about as fail proof as possible. I also use these valves every day. When I arm my alarm to away mode (both at home and office), after a 45 minute delay to allow for appliances to finish, it shuts the valve. Also, I have water sensors located all around directly connected to my alarm panel which if tripped will immediately shut the water off. In short, my Elk valves run sometimes multiple times per day for a decade or more and continue to work. Also, by using the valves every day, you know they work. Both valves are within ear shot of where I disarm the alarm and can hear them turn on. Also, I can hear a little bit of water flow confirming it was actually off. Sometimes the dishwasher or washing machine had more than 45 minutes to go. The washer will report a no flow error in the event also confirming water was actually off.

I would start with a factory reset and then restore from ISY.

I had already tried that. But just in case, I tried again, and still no go. I also tried setting the other two items that are (not recommended), in other words, all three no recommended items were checked and it still doesn't work.

It is found, but it erroneously sees it as a 994i and when you click to open the admin console, nothing happens.

Any ideas? Perhaps I could install an old version of java? Do you know how old you have to go to still have that option? I can tell you that I opened my 99i admin console about 18 months ago and didn't have to do anything at all. Presumably the certificate was still valid?

it isn't a security issue with the web browser. Downloading the admin.jnlp file goes fine. It is when you run that file that java gets involved and java blocks it.

@MrBill It is set to just high, not very high. I tried putting the url of my isy in the exception list but that did not work. I also tried changing around some of the settings under the advanced tab but again no luck. I don't know exactly how this works. But clearly the admin.jnlp file is downloaded from the isy itself when you go to http://my.isy.ip/99i/3.3.10/admin.jnlp But then when you run that admin.jnlp file, not sure if it is loading java console from the isy or from some website.

According to this, it expired a decade ago, but I just logged in about a year ago.

I have an old 99i that I am using as the IR receiver for my polisy since polisy has no IR receiver on it. Last login was about a year ago and was done by going to the following url: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/99i/3.3.10/admin.jnlp This downloaded admin.jnlp I could run admin.jnlp and it opened the java console. Now, I get the following security error: I can not figure how to get around this. I tried shutting down checking certificates in the advanced tab of java but it did not work.

Seems I answered my own question. Indeed, there is a separate node for heat/cool state that is not listed on the summary page. It is found in programs under status/thermostat name (just the name, not cool ctl or heat ctl which even though they are control functions still have a "state" which is always the last control command received by ISY and can not be corrected via a query).