After 15 years of excellent service, I turned my hot water on but NO HOT Water! ! I have a plastic tank manufactured in Nashville, TN by Howard Harris Enterprises. It is called H.H20. It has a sleeve going from the top of the heater protecting two wires connecting the element, which screws into the bottom of the sleeve. Water tight, this has served my family well for 15 years,. Any ideas for parts to repair?
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Bizzaro! How in the world did you find it to purchase?
I see where the elder Mr Harris was acclaimed "2007 Tennessee Inventor of the Year" and a joint proclamation of congratulations was passed by TN legislature, but absolutely can find nothing about the actual product or any site.
I did find a somewhat dated address/phone number with at least the middle TN area code...
(615) 226-3700
3427 Ambrose Ave. Nashville, Tennessee, USA 37207Good luck, you're probably going to need it, but I'd suggest start with seeing if that number will get you to anybody who knows anything...after that, chasing down the place from which you purchased if they're still around...
Howard got into a more lucrative business .. :-)
discussion circa 2008
Degenerated into argument pretty quickly ... would have to see what the actual layout is but it appears to be substantially different only in using a preheat arrangement on the cold water inflow -- but unless and that is what isn't at all clear -- the preheater also uses an additional heater and not just an exchanger from the hot water in the tank to the inflow, it's simply taking that heat from the already hot water to preheat the inlet a little.
It well may be that the outlet/storage temperature is hot enough the reduction isn't noticed and so it seems to have a better throughput/recovery but it can't actually increase overall efficiency.
The two combatants at the FHB site never actually got to the real description of the unit but the one claiming no improvement is more nearly correct in terms of the overall input energy required to heat X gallons of water Y degrees is the same. Whether it is potentially a little more efficient in doing so besides the reduced heat loss compared to conventional would require a detailed engineering analysis to determine and there's insufficient information from which to do that.
It wouldn't be the first time a patent awarded and invention hailed that was just totally wrong from a physics standpoint -- perpetual motion machines have managed to sneak through before.
It's actually a pass-thru system; the tank is stationary water and the usable hot water is through flowing like an on-demand heater.
But everything from 10+ years ago...
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From what I read the essential difference is that the cold incoming water never mixes with the hot water in the tank. Instead it passes through a copper coil that sits inside the tank of hot water. They allege that this leads to higher efficiency. I'm not seeing it, you still have to raise X gallons of incoming cold to the final temp either way.
As to parts, since this was some small company, it seems likely that they were not using a lot of custom made parts. Most likely the common stuff, eg heating elements were some off the shelf parts. But that could still mean they chose some not so common parts years ago that are no longer available.
Is there some sort of term for this type of water heater? Indirect doesn't seem quite right. Maybe a competitor would have something that would work if so.
I hate to get back on topic but have you figured out what part you need? The element might be a standard part as could be the thermostat. There is not that much else to go wrong in an electric water heater if it isn't pissing water everywhere.
Indeed...it wasn't until after I had posted a couple earlier comments I found the patent that illustrates the isolated flow path that figured out what was attempted to be described...had thought it was just a preheater on the cold inlet flow stream that was the innovation.
Indeed, you can't take the first and second laws out of the system; the required heat input is what it is to get raise a specific mass of water from one temperature to another irrespective how it is supplied.
The heat here all goes directly into heating the stagnant pool and the supply is heated indirectly by the conduction through the heat exchanger coils; how hot it gets in proportional to the flow rate and reheat rate of the supply pool that transfers its heat to the incoming stream.
At steady state, the supply in the exchanger will be at same temperature as the stagnant pool; the available hot water at or very near the setpoint temperature then is the volume of that coil inside the tank; once it is depleted, then its purely an on-demand design dependent upon the efficiency of the exchanger, flow rate and inlet temperature.
The thermal efficiency can't be any better than the fully immersed heater element; somewhere I found an admission from the Harris Company that indeed the efficiency gains they claim are only from the higher-than-average insulation of the tank in comparison, not that the heater itself operates more efficiently.
It would seem they likely are using standard heating element(s); one thing that is kinda' kewl if the OPs unit is built like the patent is that one can open the top of the tank while full to replace elements...although how it is plumbed to the external connections might affect accessibility.
Be interesting to hear back from OP if he can ever track down these folks or the supplier from which he obtained his unit...of course, just opening up the top and looking might answer a lot of questions. And, of course, he hasn't told us for certain what's broke altho one presumes loss of the heating element would be a good guess.
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I agree on all of the "efficiency" discussion. The only efficiency gain on an electric water heater come from insulation.
As for the part, if it is a plastic widget, maybe a company into 3D printing could make him one. A decade ago this was not practical but these days it is a thing. Other than that he might be cobbling up something that works from commonly available things. I would have been to the BORG and bought a new water heater by now. Unfortunately it still might be $100
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The fact the cold water doesn't mix with the already hot stagnant pool seems to have confused a lot of folk...as noted, initially I thought the idea was a preheater, but that doesn't help any, either, for a water heater.
Power plants, etc., gain efficiency by using preheaters, but they're scavenging the heat from the exhaust side; there is no such source of waste heat in an electric water heater.
You could potentially gain some slight efficiency with natural gas or propane by using the waste heat from the exhaust flue, but it's only available when the burner is on and is so low grade a source wouldn't be worth the added cost and complexity.
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