Hello Everyone,
I'm looking to build a tank-less on demand electric water heater for myself. I just replaced my 40 gallon hot water tank about 5 months ago and it just started leaking yesterday. The hot water tank is still under warrantee and will be replaced at no cost (but not the installation) by the manufacturer but I thought this would be a good time to build my own on demand one and selling the replacement one would more than pay for this project.
I've already built a programmable thermostat circuit to control an electric space heater using a DS1820 chip so I should be able to utilize one for this project. I'm thinking that I'll have to use a water flow sensor of some sort to sense when the hot water tap is turned on so the microprocessor will know when to turn on/off the heating elements and also a DS1820 or similar chip to monitor the temperature and if it gets too high to shut off the elements. I've never had any experience in using a flow sensor and there are so many different ones on the market. Would anyone know of a good water flow sensor that would suit my application and would be easy to interface to a pic chip?
Also if anyone has done this sort of project I would be really interested in any do's or don'ts or comments about this type of project. I was a welder/heavy duty mechanic for years before I got into appliance repair (my current vocation) and have a big shop in my back yard with all the equipment that I'll need to accomplish this project on my own so I should be able to build one at a very low cost.
Can anyone help me to get started with this project?
Thanks
jessey
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