General electric geospring waterheater experiments.

solarvic

Hi friends. I have a couple questions about my geospring waterheater. When I first installed it it went thru a setupstage. First it checked if tank was full,next it run the heating elements a few minutes then it went into the heatpump heating mode. Then I set it up to ecostage where it operates only at the heatpump mode. Since then it has always run in the heatpump mode. Last week I disconnected the heating elements to see if it would run that way,it does. I am going to install a dc waterheater element that has a builtin thermostat. I want to use that for a dumpload when I get setup for ac coupling. I will have to drain the tank so I can install the new element. Does anyone know if the waterheater will go thru the original setup since all the water will be cold when I refill it. If it does then the waterheater probably won,t run. What I think I will do is heat up all the water in the tank with the dc waterheating element before I turn back on the ac. Anyone agree with me that I should have the water heated up before I turn the ac back on waterheater. :Dsolarvic:D

solarvic

Re: General electric geospring waterheater experiments.

While browsing the net I found out that GE is starting to build the geospring waterheater in America. http://www.geappliances.com/american-made-water-heater/ Good news for a change, and they lowered the price. I ordered mine from sears website 16 months ago. and was disapointed that it was made in China. :Dsolarvic:D

niel

Re: General electric geospring waterheater experiments.

i can't answer your questions, but i have to ask is it just being assembled here with parts from china or is it to be all usa made and assembled?

solarvic

Re: General electric geospring waterheater experiments.

My experiment with the dc heating element with the builtin thermostat didn,t work for me. There wasn,t enoufh clearance to screw it in . Couldn,t get it to stop leaking. No way to get on the part where you put the wrench. I tryed an oil filter wrench and end with thermostat twisted off. I started to think I had too much money in the geospring and don,t want to do anything that would void the warranty. So I might use the dc element in another waterheater to preheat the water. :Dsolarvic:D

Ralph Day

Re: General electric geospring waterheater experiments.

Good move on protecting your warranty. I worry about a thermostat controlling a dump load. What if you still have power to dump and the thermostat shuts down the element? (if that's already covered here, my apologies)

Ral;ph

Ken Marsh

Re: General electric geospring waterheater experiments.

Solarvic,

The reason it goes through a warm up before it starts the Heat Pump is that the pressure of the high side of the freon cycle is determined by the temp of the water. When the water is too cold the pressure is too low to get the freon to flow. The compressor motor is cooled by the freon hence, theoretically at least, the motor could be damaged. But in actuality there usually is a high current overload switch, which is also temp sensitive, wound in with motor windings. This should open before any damage occurs. I don't know if your unit uses a capillary tube or an expansion valve. Cap tubes have more problems with wide temperature swings.

What value of load resistor do you need? It seems redundant to add another tank and it seems like you would have the same problem with a second tank. Standard elements for water heaters come from 600 watts to 4200 watts at 220 V. Most residential water heaters use two elements which can be put in series or parallel. This gives quite a range of resistance to work with.

solarvic

Re: General electric geospring waterheater experiments.

The reason I couldn,t get the dc element to work is there wasn,t enough clearance to get past the insulation on the side of the tank. The only way I would have been able to use it would be to cut some more sheetmetal and insulation off the outside of waterheater. I didn,t want to do that because I didn,t want to invalidate the warranty. So far I am happy with the geospring and hope I don,t need to use the warranty. :Dsolarvic:D