DERNORD Immersion Heater

23 amps at 12v

This is a great option for heating water in my car rooftop solar tube. Fit is excellent. ABS 4x4x2 fitting with PVC adapter/reducer and threaded galvanized reducer. I test ran with one element connected. It drew 175 watts. When I connected the second it drew 350 watts. Thought folks should know actual power usage.

I measured the element with connecting bars attached. Ohms measured 0.5 ohms, 12 V/0.5 ohm=24 amps, 24x12=288 watts. This will give a decent amount of heat to keep water from freezing.

Appears that I should work as intended, looks like good quality.

I have used these for years and never had one fail. With the two elements, they can be configured for half-load (one element), full load 12V (factory config with parallel jumpers) or full load 24V (move jumpers to series the elements). As such, they are perfect dump loads for solar and wind turbine use and can store energy as hot water. The 1" NPT fittings fit many common water heaters.

it works, simple to install, drilled a hole in my water container and hooked it up to my battery its gets super hot, takes a bit longer to warm the water than i thought it would tho, but i didnt know what to expect.

So far we have just tested it to make sure it heats up. It did.

Terrible. I got the element and put it in the boiler the next day. I hooked the heater, as a test, to a solar battery bank (12V 60A) to heat 5 gallons water. It worked for 3 days, and the residual current unit cut off the current. I took out the element obviously it is not stainless steel, after 3 days it is with a lot of rust & the metal damaged, has a leakage. Very poor quality, surely not 304 ss!!! Don't buy it, waste of time.

I replaced the 120v element in a Kuuma heater with this unit. Ran 8 gauge power cable to it and it does work. But it takes forever to heat a 10 gallon water heater from cold. Like 6 hours. The 120v element heated the tank from cold in 45 minutes. Once hot it maintains temp okay. Each cycle is about 1 hour. That being said its drawing 28 amps during that time. Overnight that depletes 40% of my 600ah battery bank. Not what I was hoping for. At 28 amps I really wish this got way hotter. I cannot decide if this is performing better than when I ran the 120v element off my inverter. I believe overnight depletion is around the same. I am really interested in trying it at 24 volts, but that an experiment for future me. So if your using this in a vehicle, and that vehicle is running the engine every day you should be fine. And 28amps is way less stress on the batteries than 160amps is from an inverter. Just plan you showers accordingly as the recoup time is LONG. I will update long term performance a few months from now.