Rheem PROE50 Electric Water Heater Review

The listing publishes 50 gallons of capacity, electric resistance heat, 240 volts, and states an 18.75 amp draw in the title itself. That amperage is a published figure, not a guess, and it lets us do one honest piece of arithmetic: at 240 volts, 18.75 amps works out to 4,500 watts by the standard relation P = V x I. From there, the standard recovery formula for an electric resistance element, GPH = kW x 3412 / (8.33 x rise), gives roughly 20.5 gallons per hour at a 90 F rise, which is a common planning assumption rather than a measured test condition. Adding one hour of that recovery to a conventional 70 percent usable fraction of the tank gives an estimated first hour rating near 55 gallons.

This suits a household replacing an existing 50 gallon electric tank on a like-for-like basis, since it is the size the existing space, wiring and drain pan were almost certainly built around. It suits a two to four person household on a 90 F rise, where the computed 20.5 gallon per hour recovery and roughly 55 gallon first hour rating cover a normal morning without a heat pump's installation requirements. It suits a buyer who wants a professional line tank with a brass drain valve and an anode rod already specified on the listing, rather than researching those as separate decisions.

Skip this if the real priority is the lowest possible operating cost over the tank's life: a heat pump water heater of the same capacity runs at two to four times the efficiency, at a higher purchase price and with its own installation requirements. Skip it if the household regularly runs multiple showers back to back and finds itself running out, since going up a tank size or to a tankless unit addresses that more directly than staying at 50 gallons. Skip it, honestly, if a home center visit with installation bundled in is genuinely available and preferred: this is the single most common tank in the country specifically because that route works for most people, and pretending otherwise here would be dishonest.

A straight electric tank swap is usually the simplest job on this site: water lines, a T&P discharge, and a 240 volt circuit sized to the element's amperage, which the breaker size calculator handles from the published amperage. Before any element work, turn the breaker off and verify it is off with a meter, and never energize an element that is not fully submerged, since a dry-fired element burns out in seconds. If the household's water is softened, note that softened water is more aggressive on a magnesium anode rod and shortens its life; the softening decision itself belongs to homewatercalc.com, while the anode's wear rate under that water is squarely this site's territory.

We did not test, install or measure this water heater ourselves. The published amperage and voltage come directly from the manufacturer listing. The wattage, recovery rate and first hour rating are computed from those published figures using the standard electric recovery formula, with the rise and usable-capacity assumptions labeled plainly as planning conventions rather than measured values. Everything else, including the measured UEF and the actual first hour rating, is not published in this listing and is not estimated here.

The tank itself is the big-box purchase. The parts around it, the ones that fail years apart and are cheap to keep on a shelf, are where an online order earns its place.