Camco Hot Water Hybrid Heat Kit - Easily Converts Any 6-Gallon RV LP Gas Water Heater to 120V Electricity to Conserve Propane (11673)

great product, easy instructions. Its nice not using propane.

Installed in/on an old '77 Unitrol/Robertshaw 6 gallon water heater that finally gave up the ghost (propane pilot light no longer stays on). Wish I'd known about this hack years ago! We live in our old small '77 Komfort trailer full time in an RV park/campground (life is hard for so many now, it's sad!)...electric is included and unmetered so this hack is a no-brainer! The element rod threaded directly into the drain plug without any of the adapters. To install/make room for the thermo I had to cut away/peel back some of the sheet metal tank enclosure, which was the hardest, most irritating part. Still haven't tidied it back up lol. The thermo adjustment is very sensitive, settled on 120°F setting- anything higher gets scalding hot! Seems like a decent 10 minute shower is easily doable, but we haven't yet tried that because we also have full facilities nearby on site. Works great for all the daily domestic hot water needs, dishes etc. Takes maybe an hour to fully reheat the tank if we run it til cold, but we rarely need to. It also is completely quiet, don't even know it's there. Once in a while I hear the thermo click off or on, that's it! Huge improvement over the finicky, unreliable, dangerous, complicated, annoyingly loud roar of the propane setup! Tell ya what...you don't realize how much of a luxury on demand hot water is until you have to do dishes and wash your face with 36°F water in the winter lol! brrr! 😰Now I hardly need to drag one of our big heavy propane tanks down and back up the mountain by ebike trailer because we barely use propane! Just for the oven and emergency/power outage backup heat. I can *highly* recommend this setup...if you are living in a park/site full time with free/cheap power like we are, you need to do this hack!

I'm retired and traveling in my motorhome. My water heater is propane. It's not that it's the cost of propane but having to drive the motorhome to a place that is designed for the guy refilling his BBQ bottle. Once in you have to back out and car has to be disconnected and reconnected. It's a pain to do. Refilling is always done in transit from one campground to next, for running out during your stay means folding everything up to go get propane or no hot water. No more worrying about running out now either. The product took me 2 hours to install, mostly the routing of the wires for a permanent instalation. A hint for the switch install: use the metal bracket for a template to trace the square hole to use a dremel to cut hole for switch. Took an hour to bring the water up to 120 degrees, but it stays on the entire 2 week stay so it's always hot. It was simple to do, instructions were clear and easy to read. Only short coming is the red wires coming out of the heating element need to be 6" longer for easier feeding to the backside of the water heater.

I recieved this product on time. I was a bit concerned when it arrived, as it was in nothing more than a display pack and padded envelope. My husband is a master mechanic, and installed it very easily. At first I was concerned. I thought it wasn't working. After about 70 minutes, my husband realized he never turned the knob to refill the tank. So we shut it off for 20-30 minutes, then refilled. After about 90 minutes we had HOT water! He somehow hooked it up so we could switch from this to propane if needed, but we've been out of propane for a while now. Our light button is like many others, off is lit, on isnt. Being that we are staying in our rv for the time being, Im happy that on is not lit. We only turn it off when we are running a lot of stuff. I can wash dishes and have hot water left. My hair goes to my behind, and we have well water, so I dont wash it every day. Which is good. I usually shower, then after a couple hours Ill go back and wash my hair. If I try to wash and condition my hair with the shower, I usually rinse off in cold. We do have 2 teens who need to shower daily. We cant do back to back showers, but we have a good rotation, and we all can get clean and rinsed with hot water! All in all, Im super happy to have found this product. Ive told many people about it. We haven't had any issues so far, and its been a good 2 months... 4 stars, because when we do run out it does take a good 80-90 mins to get back to hot, but its well worth the money!

This is a "must have" upgrade for anyone who has a camper or RV with a propane hot water heater in it. I spend a lot of time in my 38' motor home in the Spring, summer and fall but have always been hesitant to activate the water heater because it uses up my propane. That is no longer a worry! I can use all the hot water that I want now. I can keep a tank of hot water at the ready at all times too! I dont have to plan an hour or more ahead just to have hot water ready for dishes or a shower. This thing is great! I can easily heat up a tank of hot water using my 200ah solar charged battery bank as well. At 450 watts, this uses a bit less than 4amps an hour while in operation and takes maybe a couple of hours to heat up(I'm exaggerating the numbers to be on the safe side). That's 8 amps total out of a 200ah bank which is constantly being renewed by solar panels anyway. So, I can even have constant(during the day) non propane hot water in the boondocks too-if I wished. Also! If you want to heat up your water faster, you can use both this electric element AND propane at the same time. Something to think about for folk who like longer showers I suppose. To install it, you'll need a few basic tools and a bit of common sense. That last tool can be the most difficult to get ahold of for some folk. Anyway, the kit comes with very clear instructions so you'll do fine if you take your time and follow them. I installed my kit in an older Atwood water heater. It works great! You can turn the water temp sensor up to 150 but I put mine at 125. I definitely get scalding hot water from my RV tap. The kit also comes with reducing bushings which have magnesium buffers built on(those things that hard water eats away at instead of the inside of your water tank). These magnesium things allow you to have both electric hot water AND water heater protection BUT are much smaller than the big rods you usually use that last multiple seasons. The ones attached to the reducing bushings will probably last just one season each(I'm hoping) so you'll want to stock up on a few. They can be found here on Amazon or on Ebay for about $14 each. I found a place in Texas that sells em for $9 each, free shipping so I bought several from there. Finally, I'll mention that if you install one of these and nothing seems to happen, double check your spade connectors. Everything in the kit is high quality but the spade connectors can go together in such a way that no connection is made. That happened to me. Thought I got a faulty unit. Was just about to take it all apart to return it when I noticed the spade connector issue. Plugged it in correctly and things were perfect. So get this kit if you have a water heater that can use it. You'll be very happy you did.

I purchased this to install in a propane only hot water heater. This is easily an investment that already paid for itself. I know that there are complaints about heating time and I wouldn't listen to them. Does this work as well as a propane heater? No. Propane will heat your water in about 10 minutes. I have a 6 gallon tank and it takes about an hour and 30 minutes. But, I rarely need hot water that fast after showing up at the campground. Re-heat time seems pretty fast since there is some hot water in the tank when the new water enters. Installation took about 2 hours. I took my time and routed wires carefully. You can adjust the temperature as well, the hottest setting is way too hot. Keep it around the setting it shows up on. I must also add that I never had electric hot water heat in any of my campers, so that makes this unit awesome to me. I will save the $55 is spent on this just over the course of this summer. Get one!

Hate to discount all the naysayers, but either they didn't install theirs correctly, or there is some other problem. I live in my RV with my husband, daughter, and two grandchildren. We are full time RVers. I couldn't see spending $500.00 or more for a new hot water heater or parts to fix the old one, so I took a chance on this. Within a few days it arrived and my husband installed it within a half hour. It is wonderful. We have plenty of hot water for a nice shower to shave, shampoo, and ease tired muscles. We only have to wait about 30 minutes between LONG showers for the next shower or to do dishes. If we take quick showers (5 mins) we can usually get in two showers, or a shower and then do dishes. Either way, a half hour wait is not very long. I've had to wait that long in a house with a 40 gallon hot water heater. Now that is frustrating. We love this product so much, my daughter will be purchasing one in a couple of weeks, as she is getting her own RV today. I am looking to purchase another RV in the near future, and this will be the first modification we make. We will install this product! I'd much rather heat my water with electricity than propane. I'm a happy customer!

Ok...for anyone still heating water in your RV with propane, GET THIS. I installed this in our travel trailer earlier this year & we've been on 3 camping trips so far. We have yet to use propane to heat our water. This does a great job heating the water & it's not as slow as some people may say. Yeah, the kit is not cheap, but neither is propane. This will pay for itself in very fast. I also installed an external 120v receptacle on the travel trailer so I can then plug the electric water heater directly into the power panel at the campground instead of one the outlets inside of the camper, that way I'm not adding an extra load to the main power to the camper. Overall this was an easy install, the only issue I had was a propane line that needed to be slightly adjusted to clear the heating element. Otherwise it went well & has been working wonderfully. I definitely recommend getting this for your RV.

Propane to heat water has been costing me in excess of $30.00 a month while not providing nearly enough hot water to have a decent 5 minute shower. Barely getting my hair washed before being blasted with freezing cold water is not even close to being one of my favourite experiences. The Camco RV Hot water heater has solved the problem. I am now able to shower in comfort and still have plenty of hot water for dish washing. Recovery is a bit slow, but the process can be speeded-up by using the propane heater simultaneously with the electric hybrid heater, when a greater volume of hot water is required. So far I haven't had to do that. Installation was relatively simple and took me about 1-1/2 hours. I assembled all of the electrical components before installing them, which saved having to spend excessive minutes crouched on my ancient knees while bending and reaching into the somewhat cramped space under the lower kitchen cupboard next to the sink. For an old guy like me with poor eyesight, the whole process was remarkably easy. I adjusted the temperature screw to approximately 140 degrees from the factory preset of 120. Doing this prevents 'things' from growing in the hot water tank and also greatly increases the available mixed hot water. If you have small children using the sinks, please use caution in increasing the water temperature. 140-150 degree water will scald.

Installation was a little complicated with the wiring in my case as I wanted to have the plug outside so I can run an extension cord from the heater to the pedestal's 15A so it wouldn't affect the RV's 30A capacity. If there is no separate 15A, I can run the extension under the RV to the exterior plug and be mindful of the power it draws. Since this is a modification on my part, I'm not penalizing the product but it would be nice if they had this possible option to wire it. I may mount a permanent plug in the hot water tank door. It works great. Will save a lot on propane by using the park's power instead and can have it on all the time, which is especially important these days with having to wash our hands so much. It's not as fast as the propane but if you do need to reheat the water faster, you can still use the propane. Note: Other reviewers here said that the 10 gal. version fits in the 6 gal. tank. In my case with the Atwood 6 gal., it DOES NOT fit. The longer 10 gal. element hits the back of the tank and sticks out about 1.5 inches. It still works but it's not ideal. Hopefully the element rod won't burn out because of the exposed portion but if it does, I'll replace it with the proper shorter 6 gal. version.

Waited till Spring to install the Hybrid Heat on a Suburban 6 gallon propane hot water tank. Install was straight forward and instructions were easy enough to follow. Wires are color coded. Just be sure to follow the wiring diagrams. One wire was missing, but I made my own using the same gauge wire and connectors. When installing the element, leave a little extra wire to allow for the removal to drain the tank. The element replaces the anode rod. A socket will no longer work to remove this now due to the coupler in the way. I plan to purchase a crow foot wrench which should do the trick. The thermostat was applied to the water heater with 2 sided tape,which seemed sturdy to hold. It is set for 120 degrees which is hot enough I think for most uses in the rv. The issue for me was laying, bending and twisting to get at the tank and wiring. Sometimes having to use a mirror to see in tight quarters. I wish I could be one of those guys who say it took an hour to install, but I cannot. I tapped into a line running to a plugin and wired another outlet specifically for the Hybrid Heat. After 1 1/2 hours of waiting the water was hot. It has not been tested while camping yet. So far I am satisfied with the product and find this to be a beneficial and worthwhile upgrade. Would recommend. Update- After several months of use, still reliable. Heats up after an hour and remains quite hot throughout the day unless you use significantly. Can see corrosion on element since it is in place of anode rod. Expect to replace over time.

I have a suburban sw6d in my trailer. I measured the depth of the tank from the drain plug and determined that the 10 gallon version of the Camco hybrid heat would fit. I wanted the higher wattage version to reduce heating times. Installation on my trailer was relatively straight forward since the hot water tank and a power outlet were nearby. The wires connections are colour coded and also easily done. I found the most difficult part was getting the wire from the heating probe through the heatshield and installation of the thermostat on the side of the water tank. Also note that the hybrid heat heating element came with a small piece of annode material attached to the mounting plug. On our first trip with the hybrid heat, I made sure to fill the hot water tank before turing on the heater. It took a good 25 - 30 minutes to get the hot water from the tank, obviously this will vary based on the original temperature of the campsite water. Since I adjusted the water temp of the thermostat relatively high, I left the propane heater off since it was not needed to maintain the temperature of the water. The only time we turn on the propane heater was for showers, as a result we used significantly less propane than usual. The drawbacks of the system is the difficulty in draining the tank at the end of the trip since drain plug is not easily removed due to the wires. If you know the plumbing system of the trailer, you can drain the tank through there instead, but it will be slower. In general, it will reduce the propane usage in some low to moderate hot water usage, however for high usage such as showers you will still need your propane heater for faster regeneration times.

The propane water heater in our older trailer stopped working. After changing the thermocouple with no success, we decided to convert to an electric heater using this product. We could not be happier with our decision. The instructions were easy to follow, everything was included in the kit, and it works well. I really appreciate that the kit comes with an on/off switch which other kits do not include. The water is hotter now that when we used propane. We've confirmed that it drWs approximately 3 amps power while in use. There are many installation videos available online to watch which are good to view before you begin your own installation. It took us 45 minutes to do the installation. The only problem we had was getting the thermostat to stay in place on the water tank. We used more tape to help with that.