Dear Cary,
I am an American expat living in Merida, Mexico. Recently I installed two CSV1, 50PSI Cycle Stop Valves in my home. One operates the flow of water in my house and the other operates the flow of water for my garden and fills the pool.
The house valve works great after much frustration with hot water surge experienced with a Bosch on-demand water heater. Down here in Merida we use city water but the water pressure is extremely weak. So I built a cistern, added a 1/2 hp submersible pump, pressure system, water softener and UV lamp. The pressure in the system was set to swing between 30 and 50 psi. The problem with this was that the Bosch unit heats water on demand and turns on and off by sensing flow. All of the water faucets and showerheads have different flow rates, with my kitchen faucet, a water saver, having the slowest rate of about 1.3 gallons per minute. Needless to say the problem I was having is that the flow rate was so slow at 30 psi in the kitchen, the Bosch unit kept going off at the bottom of the cycle.
Also, significantly in the shower, the 30 to 50 psi swing would vary the hot water temperature coming from the Bosch water heater about 4 degrees F. This caused great frustration when taking a shower since the water would pulse from warm to hot over several minutes. The pressure tank was 44 gallons and so it held about 12 gallons of water and took about 3-4 minutes to go through a cycle.
After installing the cycle stop the pressure stabilizes at 53 psi after going through a first cycle. The pressure switch is adjusted to 30 to 55 psi. All was well in the shower once cycle stop kicks in, but before then the first cycle still provides warm to hot water and then stabilizes. I read on your website that reducing the tank size was fine with cycle stop and so yesterday installed a 6 gallon pressure tank. Also, we set the switch to 35-55 psi. Now the first cycle has been reduced from 3-4 minutes to 15 seconds, about the time it takes the hot water to reach the shower head and so finally I have eliminated the drawback associated with a Bosch on-demand water heater and essentially have a water pressure system that operates 99% of the time at 53 psi or close to what I had back in America. Your product is just short of a miracle and has saved me the trouble of having to go back to a gas fired 50 gallon water heater which would have cost be about 3-4 times more to operate than the on demand system.
Before I close and I apologize for this long note, but I think it important that you receive this valuable market intelligence on your product and hope you continue to read.
Finally, I wanted to point out that I have recommended your product to several others down here in the Yucatan who are experiencing the same problem with the Bosch on-demand water heater. I have written to Bosch for advice and gotten no response. Fortunately, I read about cycle stop on-line and through my pool company, though your product is unknown by most of the hydraulics companies in Merida.
You might consider contacting Bosch Water Heating Systems to see if you can either do a deal with them or possibly tie your product to their water heater. In my opinion, after a year of frustration and much market research, I have concluded that an on-demand water heater which saves about 70% on LP gas provides unacceptable water heating without having your cycle stop valve to regulate water pressure. In fact, I would go on to say that if I were Bosch, I would not sell another on-demand water heater without either including your product or at least mentioning your product in the installation instructions.
I hope this long letter is helpful to your business. Also, for your info, I am building another house in Merida and will be using two more of your cycle stop valves in the process. I AM A BELIEVER!
Best,
Steve
