I've been using our outside garden hose hooked into my mister/dripper set-up. The water is fresh and clean and comes directly from the well. The well water out at the lake during the summer is running in the low 40's F for temperature. While a cool mist on a hot day feels good to humans, at this temp, it's just no fun for a Chameleon. It's even worse on a cool cloudy day. Time to do something about it.
I picked up a 5gal water heater in Calgary and brought it out to the lake. I know this sounds stupid but I removed the unit from the box and it was upside down. I never turned the unit over and just hooked it up this way. It's not quite as stupid as it sounds - the stickers were all placed on the unit sidewise and you really couldn't tell by looking at it which end was the top. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not but the unit kept blowing the breaker and never did heat up. Perhaps the water didn't fill up over the element when it was upside down - this can cause your element to burn out. Who knows...
After a 2 hour drive to Moose Jaw to return the "defective" unit, I picked up a replacement. This one was a slightly different model with proper labels and a clear top and bottom. I hooked it up right side up and it worked like a charm.
Couple of tips for you. You will need to purchase a 125psi pressure relief valve. These are required in hot water heaters but for some reason they are not included. Nice to find that out when you are hours from anywhere.
These units can run on 120v or 220v. I don't know anything about 220 except it really hurts (and can easily be fatal) when you touch a live 220 wire. I'm sticking with 120 (which also hurts but probably won't kill you) for my setup. At 120v, a 1500W unit will use 12Amps. Most circuits are 15 amps so you will be just fine but don't plan to put much else on that circuit. My heater comes with a 1500W coil which is way overkill for what I need. You might want to replace the 1500W coil with a 750W coil. You won't save any money because it still takes the same amount of power to heat the water - your water just heats up slower - but it will allow you to share the circuit with other electrical items.
Don't expect to find a handy plug-in. You have to wire this sucker up yourself. When you wire up the plug you will be using wire that has 3 strands - a black, white and copper wire. At the plug end, the copper wire hooks to the green screw, the black wire (power wire) hooks to the gold screw and the white wire hooks to the silver screw. If you get this wrong, as I did the first time, expect a really nice shower of sparks. On the water heater, just hook the black wire to black, white to white and screw the copper wire to the ground screw.
Make sure the water heater is totally full before you turn on the power! You can release air by running water through the unit or by using the pressure relief valve.
You will see my heater sitting exposed on the deck. I am still building a small shelter for the heater to keep it out of the elements. The electrical circuit is on a ground fault breaker so if water gets into the water heater it will trip the breaker and shut off the power. That will prevent electrocution to people on your deck but water inside the control unit could easily ruin the heater. Keep it dry.
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The water that comes out of a water heater can be scalding hot. Set the temperature to the lowest setting. Let the water heat up then measure the temperature of the water output and adjust up from there. DO NOT go by the temperature printed on the knob - those temperatures are very inaccurate and you could easily end up with a cooked chameleon. |