On Sep 16, 4:05*pm, Jim Elbrecht wrote:
wrote:
On Sep 15, 6:01*pm, " wrote:
On Sep 14, 11:23 pm, ransley wrote:

...

obviously you have never replaced a scale covered electric heater
element- Hide quoted text -

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*The scale on an electric heater does not reduce efficiency. *100 BTU
in water gets 100 BTU *

-snip-

But. . . *A scale covered electrode will transfer those BTUs to the
water slower than a clean one. *[can one of you ashrae engineers check
the emmisivity index of copper vs limestone] *To compensate for this
slower transfer the homeowner will raise the temp of the tank-
increasing losses- and making the electric less efficient.


Nonsense. If you have a 4500 Watt element submerged in water, where
do you think the heat is going while it's waiting to get to the
water? If the heat isn't going directly to the water, it would have
to be stored somewhere else. And where would that be? Sure, a
scale covered element will run slightly hotter, but it's not going to
be at all noticeable to the user in terms of how hot the water
gets. If it's severly covered or totally buried, it will eventually
burn out.



On tank life- get the one with the longest warrantee. Pray. Get lucky.
[my cheap LP heater just croaked this week. * *It was approaching 20
yrs old.]

Jim