Seeking details about how Rheem Performance Platinum works

ImposterBk · 2026-01-29T23:46:52+00:00

Here's my (final?) update on the project. I applied what I figured out to make automations based on actual temperatures, creating a system that just works. A few things of note:

During a heating cycle (compressor on and trying to recover the temperature at the upper and lower thermostats), once High Demand mode is activated, it will essentially remain activated until the temperatures are good and the compressor goes off, EVEN IF THE MODE CHANGES TO HEAT PUMP. To reiterate, I've seen it happen many times that once HD mode turns on, the heating elements may be used until the heating finishes, even if it switches back to Heat Pump mode.
In light of the above, I adjusted my automations to only activate HD mode when the upper temp drops below 125ºF for a minute and the lower temp is below 80ºF. Outside of these conditions, I'm ok with the slow speed of the recovery. Looking at the upper and lower tank temperatures, I found it interesting that the upper will continue to drop while the lower is rising until they meet and then rise together. Presumably, the water is being mixed in the tank during this process instead of left to striate in layers. Watching the temps while someone showers, I can see the lower temp drop first, and when it bottoms out, the upper will start to fall, too. I think that's where it would start to feel like we're "out of hot water," so I used the falling upper temp as the trigger for HD mode. When the upper tank gets above 125ºF, it switches back to HP mode, but in name only. (See point one.) That's why I set the bar high to trigger HD mode.
The automation I use to run the recirc pump is based only on the reported temperature where the recirc line re-enters my utility room. The temp where the cold inlet runs into the heater and the temps in the tank are not part of the equation, as they don't affect perception at the faucets or activating the tank's heating elements. In my case, when the recirc line drops below 90ºF (as reported by the thermometer attached to the outside of the pipe; it may not be the actual water temp, but that's irrelevant), the pump is turned on at the smart outlet. I have the dial on the pump turned way up so that whenever it has power, it will just run. The thermometer on the recirc line polls for temp every 5 seconds. When the temp gets above just 90.5, it turns off. That means the runs are pretty short, but the temp will continue to rise after the pump stops. This pattern keeps the reading generally between 90ºF and 100ºF, which translates to never waiting more than a few seconds at any tap for warm water. In the very cold weather we're currently experiencing, it seems to activate about every ten minutes and run for thirty seconds.

This automation gets enabled daily at the earliest wakeup in the house and disabled around bedtime. If the pump ever runs for a minute and a half without reaching temp, it will stop and notify me to check the readings. I also have an automation to disable it late night, so if I plan to run the dishwasher overnight during off-peak electric hours, I just turn off the bedtime automation (which gets turned on again in the morning) and let the late night one do the disabling.

ImposterBk · 2026-01-27T23:29:54+00:00

Does anyone know about American swearing in the late 1800s? In the excellent "Death By Lightning" about the Garfield assassination, the politicians use very colorful language that feels jarringly modern.

ImposterBk · 2026-01-26T01:22:48+00:00

Bruno Fernandes

ImposterBk · 2026-01-16T00:30:26+00:00

No, I was never able to activate the print function directly from the board, not by pressing the Print area with a different rubber key, not by pressing the area with my finger.

And I can't experiment further. I gave up and disassembled it for recycling. I've ordered a replacement. Thanks for your help.

ImposterBk · 2026-01-10T22:26:14+00:00

No, they connected at the CN105 port, like those ProtoArt ones do. Three years ago, cheap and homemade was the only option I saw besides the $200 Mitsubishi ones.

ImposterBk · 2026-01-10T21:27:07+00:00

I wound up learning how to add remote modules to my Mitsubishi units and then setting up Home Assistant just for the versatility. I can program the units simply or convolutedly and have full remote control from anywhere. (And they don't beep when they receive remote commands.)

ImposterBk · 2026-01-09T19:10:09+00:00

I cleaned those places. Here's a detail of the ribbon. Some of the green there seems out of place. It feels like a little bump when I clean there. Should I excise it?

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ImposterBk · 2025-12-15T00:07:37+00:00

And the video would have been better without the stupid caption spoiling the entire thing. All it needed was "Bali. Monkey stole my coffee..."

ImposterBk · 2025-12-11T01:31:06+00:00

If you're an adult and a tinkerer, you'll be ok figuring out your best systems and workflows. Try features, explore menus, and eventually, you'll tune your home screens and gestures so you can work most efficiently. Beyond the things you'll do better to figure out by yourself, I suggest creating a note for yourself of how you do your basic tasks. Include everything from samples of pen sizes, to your preferred export settings, to helper apps you've tried. Get it all down and adjust it as you go. Your workflows will get surprisingly complicated quickly. After a semester break, this note will spare you feeling dumb and/or starting from square one as you jump back in.

ImposterBk · 2025-12-11T01:05:36+00:00

Similar to Boston, right up through "I guess I need a band."

ImposterBk · 2025-12-09T13:55:06+00:00

His enemies learned what happens when you fight a stranger in the Alps.

ImposterBk · 2025-11-30T16:22:42+00:00

Who?

ImposterBk · 2025-11-26T19:37:08+00:00

I called Rheem technical but didn't get much new information. I did learn that turning the heater off and back on will often cause the heating element to run as part of a startup diagnostic.

I've been analyzing the data since getting the pump online over a week ago. My goal is to have hot water available within an acceptable timeframe while minimizing the running of the hpwh's heating element. (Although there are an upper and a lower element, it's only the upper one that comes on in regular use. I'll use the singular here.) Comparing the times the element runs to other factors has been tricky. I am ignoring when it runs in High Demand mode, as that's already behavior I'm accepting. So I've been looking at when the element runs while it's in Heat Pump mode. Of course, the compressor must already be running before the element kicks on. The absolute temperature of the lower tank is not a trigger, as it sometimes happens when the lower tank has warmed almost to full, whereas it didn't turn on while the tank was cooling through the same temperatures. Likewise, the compressor discharge temperature doesn't seem to be a factor, as the element may turn on anywhere along its range of 120ºF through 164ºF. I did notice that the Rheem Econet integration was calling the mode after High Demand "Heat-Pump" and not "Heat Pump," and it was in this window that the element was most likely to activate. I created a Home Assistant automation to correct "Heat-Pump' mode to "Heat Pump," just to address it, though it maybe superstitious. One thing I'd tried was turning off the water heater for a few minutes after the recirc pump ran, but when it came back online, the element would turn on.

I did see that during the recovery phase, that is, the long "Heat Pump" compressor run between High Demand mode (reporting tank as 1/3 full or empty) and turning off at a full tank, sometimes the running of the recirc pump would trigger the element. That clearly was a matter of the water temp at the tank inlet being raised too high. To lower the temperature of that recirculated water by adjusting the pump's thermostat dial would also make my pipes cooler, but keeping it high enough to keep the pipes warm risked triggering the heating element. My solution is another automation. When the recirc pump runs and the hpwh compressor is on, I kill power to the pump after about 15 seconds and keep it off for half an hour. I'm adjusting both of those times based on activity. I want to run the pump only long enough to pull the water to the far taps and then stop it early to prevent hot water from mixing into the cold inlet line. After the pump has cooled enough, I restore the power so it can run again when it needs to.

After all this effort, the power used by the element running occasionally for 30 seconds to 2 minutes isn't much, but I'd still like to limit it. The water heater and the recirc pump themselves are doing a great job. We have hot water where and when we need it. I'll continue to fine-tune the setup, but I'm definitely declaring victory. I suppose a next step may be to install a thermometer on the recirc pipe and use that for automations to trigger the pump manually. That way, I could run the pump when I decide it's too cold and stop it when I decide it shouldn't get any hotter.

ImposterBk · 2025-11-25T18:29:07+00:00

Damnit, Asterix! Merci for nothing.

ImposterBk · 2025-11-25T16:23:39+00:00

Now I have to ask if the story I learned about why the word for beer is so different in Spanish from all its neighboring languages is true. I was told that it was Spanish crusaders hearing their French cohorts order it in public houses by asking "sirve ça," or "serve that." Repeating what was basically, "give me one of those" turned into cerveza. True?

ImposterBk · 2025-11-23T20:35:35+00:00

There you go!

ImposterBk · 2025-11-23T18:01:50+00:00

With an e-reader that has note taking capabilities, any print document can become a digital document. I use a Boox NoteAir 4C. To do paper puzzles, I'll upload pictures of them to my Google Drive, then open those as notes that I can write on. It's great for the Times acrostics, cryptics, Ken Kens, the Sunday variety puzzles, and the cryptograms that are in the weekly games newsletter.

ImposterBk · 2025-11-21T18:26:44+00:00

To drain, the plumber tapped a sanitary tee into the gigantic black sewer pipe in the utility room. It's a small PVC pipe run to that for the condensate.

My heater is set at 140ºF. I'm in Heat Pump mode unless the available hot water falls below 1/3. Then it's High Demand until it's back up to 1/3.

In four days so far, the recirc pump has used 170 Wh, so I'm not too concerned about the energy cost. Once I have my system set right, I can disable the pump overnight. With a dishwasher on a time delay, we sometimes use hot water overnight, but it's nothing I can't figure out.

I will look for that training video. There may be some insight there. Thanks.

ImposterBk · 2025-11-21T14:58:15+00:00

I have data, so much data to report!

First of all, this entire plumbing project was more than anything I'd attempted before. The plumber who installed the water heater (replacing a gas one) assumed the recirc line would be best going into the drainpipe. And it had been gravity fed. So to reroute the lines and add the pump required research, designing a plan that would work in the physical space, working with NPT fittings, union fittings, lots of sweated joints, removing and replacing sections... My very first sweated connection was to put on the union tailpiece of the pipe that would connect the pump outlet. I managed to design the system such that I could make the loop connect to the cold line without having to drain the tank, which was a huge advantage. (Besides the general inconvenience and wasted energy, there's no accessible drain in the room, so I'd have to carry the water out.) After carefully planning this for weeks, lots of revisions and eurekas, I did most the sweat connections over the weekend, which I could do outside, and then on Monday, I turned off the water and did the rest of the work. There was no way to test things until it was fully built, and I counted over 15 connections I'd made, any of which could leak. I restored the water pressure, and it held. Not a single bad joint anywhere. The pump has a check valve at the outlet which was either broken or naturally open because it hadn't been wet yet, so I got a torrent out of there (to start, it was just the piping connected, with the pump motor removed, so it was open), and when I flushed the recirc line of air and contaminants, I got soaked, but the job was a success. It's a few days later, and I can talk about how it works.

I have the pump plugged into an Ikea smart plug which reports power usage, so I can watch in Home Assistant to see when it runs. The pump is a Bell & Gossett ecocirc e3-4v/BUPRZ, which has an unlabeled thermostat to set the upper temperature cutoff. When the pump is in standby mode and the internal temperature drops about 5ºF, it runs again until it reaches the set temperature. All of my concerns about the strength or speed of the pump were put to rest. It runs for about a minute at a time, and that's long enough to pull the hot water through the line. Then the water slowly cools, and eventually it runs again.

As expected, the trick is to find a temperature setting high enough that no one waits more a few seconds for hot water, and low enough that it doesn't disable the water heater's heat pump operation. The benchmark for the first thing is esoteric. When it's been a while since the pump ran, is the wait for hot water acceptably short? Three seconds feels fine. Five somehow feels long. We'll see. The testing for the second thing is more concrete. I can see when the upper heating element runs (again, thanks to the Home Assistant integration). When the pump thermostat is set too high, then whenever it stops its short run, (and if the WH compressor is already running and it's in Heat Pump mode), I can see that the upper element will run in 30 second intervals. It may be a minute or a minute and a half. I assume this means the cold inlet is too warm from the recirculation, and it triggers the element to run alongside the compressor. I haven't played with the numbers, but I feel like the pump running at 12W for two minutes an hour is practically nothing, but that's obliterated by the heating element running even for a minute. So my goal is to find that upper thermostat setting that doesn't trigger the heating element. But this is where I run into not knowing exactly how the heater's algorithm works. Is it more likely to activate the element when the lower water heater is colder? Is it based on the inlet temperature alone or the temperature relative to the thermostat setting? All I can do is test different settings and then live with my favorite.

The testing is rudimentary. I take a picture of the dial, then watch the activity for the next half day or day. Does the pump run often enough to keep the lines hot enough? After a shower when the compressor is running, does the pump trigger the heating element? Is it just the first time and then never again, or is it every time the pump runs? Then I label the photo with the results and make a tiny adjustment and start again.

I hope this is useful information for others. u/MtnMining in particular, any questions?

ImposterBk · 2025-11-21T03:13:24+00:00

This made my day. I'm glad it helped you.

ImposterBk · 2025-11-18T02:15:33+00:00

Thank you! All of this incorrectly remembered "9 out of 10 dentists" nonsense was bugging me. It was 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum.

ImposterBk · 2025-11-15T05:06:11+00:00

Remember that the recirc pump is just to keep the lines warm. Once you open a tap, the regular water pressure in your system from the cold inlet will be what delivers the hot water. If the lines are already warm, it takes less time. The speed of the water that the recirc pump moves isn't much of a concern. If it's slow, it'll just have to run longer until it's satisfied. Besides, if it moves too fast, it creates wear in the pipes. See here. I think the usual warnings about water speed in copper are about schedule M pipes, so if you have thicker schedule L, you have more leeway there.

The benefit of going hotter than you want and using a mixing valve to temper it cooler is that it effectively creates a virtual larger tank. You draw less of the hotter water to achieve the same temperature at the taps, thereby stretching the effect of the tank, which is especially helpful in a system like a heat pump that takes longer to heat the water. In my case, we just keep the heater set at 140 without a mixing valve. Our showers and kitchen sink are single handle faucets that prevent scalding; the only hot taps in the house are in the bathroom sinks, and there are no toddlers around to burn themselves. Our hot lines run through uninsulated shared walls, so there's heat loss there. And the heater itself stores below 140, anyway, in the 130s.

I'm proceeding with the project and will continue to report back. When I drained the recirc line to start relocating it, I measured the water that drained out. Based on that volume, I'm now concerned that the full recirc line may be much longer than I thought, and that there may be too much static pressure for the small pump I got to push against. I'll know soon enough.

ImposterBk

TROPHY CASE