No you are correct, the DC usage is minimal, the motor heating the Aquahot is a blessing but heating the aquahot from AC is very challenging for the system, I will bet that it draws more current than any other item in the coach, including the dryer.
IIRC the two electric elements are 6500 watts total? A 120vac and 220vac.
Rudy has come up with a way to separate the 2 elements where you can switch only the 120vac element on.
Sounds like your plans are going great! Hope to see it some day.
Jack, for many years, only Newell had the second 4500 watt, 240 vac electric element. Turning on the electric element when heating of the coolant is needed results in lots of amps and reduced A/C capacity.
One idea is to abandon the 240 vac element in place and only use the 120 vac, 1654 watt, 15 amp element. For years, all other Aqua Hot heaters only had the one element. My 2001 Foretravel has the one element and we get by just fine.
You would need to turn the one element on with a switch not recognized by the Newell system so the A/Cs do not get cut off. The grey relay mounted on the front wall of the Aqua Hot compartment is latched to turn on the elements.
If you need some more thoughts, let me know, I am happy to assist you.
Rudy Legett
2003 Foretravel U320 4010
ISM11 450 hp Allison 4000R
Factory Authorized Aqua Hot Repair Center
Southeast Texas Area
Thank you Rudy I'll be talking to you, we got the first one ton unit working today waiting on a thermostat for the ducted unit that's over the top of the refrigerator I forgot the ducted unit does not have a remote control but uses a standard thermostat or a Wi-Fi module which neither did I have. Right now outside it's 40° and we have the heat pump going it's brought the temperature up in the salon 9 degrees in 30 minutes.
Kathleen is happy!
Yesterday was a tough day, removed all the 3/8" and 1/4" line sets I put in by mistake then we started on pulling the 5/8" and 3/8" line sets for the 18k btu bedroom unit. All of our work install the plastic 4" drainage in vane the tubing had to be removed, the 3/8" and 1/4" tubing pulled through this 4" plastic drain tubing with ease but the 5/8" and 3/8" made it impossible to pull through. After working on this part all day and getting it into the bedroom through the old Newell ducting I went out to take the box off the 18k inverter compressor and found it much larger than the 24k inverter compressor. It just doesn't make sense to me how a larger unit could be smaller in size! If I had to do over I would have just installed a 12k btu unit in the back I think this would have been fine for just the bedroom.
18k compressor installed and the head unit hooked up and working its quite and it puts out a lot of heat, we may have gone over board on the rear unit I think 12k heat pump would have been more than enough but we will see come summer. We had 4 tons of heat air that was not functioning right, the duct work in the front bay where the basement air was located was a mess and not done correctly, when the AC came on it sounded like being on the flight deck and a jet goes to afterburners. The duct work Newell did was beautifully done and I hated to cut into it but now we have state of the art heat pumps and whisper quite. When I get it all buttoned up and trimmed out I will post pictures, I will also take my clamp on amp meter and show what the current draw is for each unit. We have 24k btu with two 12k btu evaporators in the front and one 18k btu evaporator in the back, both compressors are in the basement air area.
I called and talked with one of the engineers that works for Ecomfort.com where we bought all the equipment and asked why the 18k unit was so much bigger than the 24k unit, he told me that the 18k unit was a newer model compressor and more efficient and heated down to the -13 degrees F and it uses 2 inverter compressors to do it thats why its bigger if I would have ordered the old style unit that the compressor was smaller. We had a lengthy discussion and he told me all LG units are over sized by 30% and that my 24000 btu unit which has hook ups for 3 evaporators and its common to run two 12k and one 7k btu evaporators all using the 1/4" 3/8" line sets. As for the cost we spent $7107.23 total for everything to make this happen. I could have gotten by 50% cheaper by using C&H units but both of us wanted something that represented the interior of the coach and LG has some cool stuff.
So now we are warm I started looking where the heat was escaping, here are a few pictures but I see the vent on the roof as a major problem
Stop talking about how quiet it is. I am afraid Rhonda will get wind of this info. Once the CFO approves the capital appropriation, I am just the hired help.
Richard and Rhonda Entrekin
99 Newell, 512
Maverick Hybrid Toad
Inverness, FL (when we're home )
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