Sooo…some plumbing is done. Yeah, I know it looks like a science project…but we always said, this is to be a Victorian house with modern features.

The tankless water heater is in and hooked up (not fired up yet). Not shown below are the electrical connection and the remote monitor panel connection.

The tankless water heater sans cover.

I have to say, I have intensely mixed feelings about installing this water heater.

On the plus side:
1) Space saver. No large water heater closet needed.
2) No vent stack needed.
3) Efficient. Costs MUCH less to operate over the year than its tanked brethren.
4) Geekiness. It has a remote panel that indicates water flow, inlet and outlet temperatures, you can set the water temp, and turn it off as well.

On the minus side:
1) Cost. It about 30% more spendy to purchase then it’s tanked brethren, although some of that is offset by the lack of need to buy and install a new vent stack.
2) Complexity. MUCH more complex than the old fashioned kind. Computer boards, electric ignitors, and miscellaneous sensors are involved. I’m just worried that it won’t be reliable and long lasting. Only time will tell. It’s an expensive experiment…

Back to the installation…

If anything at all scares me about this project, it’s how much all the little things add up.

Water heater? No problem. I know the cost and planned for it.

Hooking up said water heater? Youch! Three high-grade flexible hoses. A gas pipe and fittings. A gas valve and flexible hose. Several brass nipples. Various fittings. If I add in the isolator valves required…we’re in the $200 range…just in fittings to hook the durn thing up. Sheesh.

Moving inside…the tankless is fed from, and returns the hot water to a PEX manifold, which serves as a distribution point for all the needed fresh water plumbing in the house, much like a breaker box for electricity.

The plumbing manifold, hooked to the tankless water heater and filters.

Keep in mind all this will be embedded in a wall (framing is there) with cabinet doors for access…probably all beadboard for those that must know.

Advantages are no joints under the house or in the walls, quicker hot water to its usage point, ease and cost of installation, code approval, and more (discussed in a different article/later). The PEX manifold is fed from the main via the filters above.

Some will ask about the need for filters…I installed them as the tankless hot water heaters all recommend a good sediment filter be installed before them in the line. The heat exchangers are so fine that sediment could clog them up and also cause corrosion.

Well, if I’m going to filter sediment from the hot water, I may as well for the cold too.

Two filters…the first one courser then the second, which lengthens the change period to probably every 6-9 months. I’ll just do it every 6 months…ya know…when you’re supposed to change your smoke and CO detector alarms. Y’all DO change those alarm batteries every 6 months, yes?

Water sent to outside spigots will NOT be filtered (waste of media).

Now…if I can just avoid cross-wiring this cool looking thing to the new electrical service, ala “Three Stooges” … you know…water shooting out the chandelier and such…then life will be good!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

In an ideal world, a gentle chime would sound and then Majel Barrett’s voice would say something like, “Warning, you are venting Dihydrogen monoxide outside the pressurised distrubution system. Current consumption of energy stores has risen by 40,000 btu’s per hour. Normal utility funding levels will be exceeded in 2.4 hours.”

All this actually means is that a hot water line broke…but yeah, I’m a geek.

Actually, in an ideal world I would have had the problem corrected before it started…but what can I say. The house got ahead of me.

We had a very minor water leak in the old plumbing since we got the house. The meter would barely tick over. I didn’t worry too much about it since I would be completely replacing the plumbing.

Shortly, I figured out it was on the hot water side, and that was even better, as we could shut off the hot water at the water heater and not leak anything except when we needed it on. The water is off to the house when we are not there.

Repair it? Yeah, I should have…but I had looked under the house and could find no leak. Wherever it was (perhaps underground), it was small enough that I could not see or hear it.

Not to worry…it was going to be replaced. It was not worth an extended effort at repairing something I was replacing shortly anyway.

I had promised myself that the house would not “get ahead” of me…as in, simply maintaining the current condition of the house would not take up so much of my time that I was not progressing forward on the rennovations.

The house got ahead of me. Sigh. The line let go. We drained the water heater of hot water in 10 minutes. I still could not hear the leak. We shut off the hot water plumbing.

We were still weeks away from being on the new water heater, and those cold baths are really COLD…cold as in…me screaming like a cheerleader on helium…cold as in…me telling the wife to put on a bra or “you’ll put somebody’s eye out with those things.”

With winter coming on it was only going to get worse…so I decided to have a look. A quick repair or a capping off a bad section could regain us the use of SOME of the hot water for the couple weeks we still need it.

My Dad came out for some much appreciated help on the house this weekend, so I headed under the house and had him crack the valve a few times…this way I could hear the spurt.

Yep, under the kitchen. Underground.

Dihydrogen nonoxide vent device...

The pic above is the pipe I pulled out. New(er) CPVC coming from the water heater to the old iron headed for the kitchen. Can y’all spot the vent?

Dihydrogen nonoxide vent device...

I cut the pvc and the rest just broke off. Done for. We capped the line and now have hot water in the bathroom…

That will do until we are on the new system…which, by the way, we started installing!

The new tankless hot water heater is in, simply waiting gas and water lines, and we installed the main manifold this weekend. Should go pretty fast now.

The new PEX manifold. The water heater is externally mounted in a flush mount cabinet…you can see the back of it…the white cabinet in the lower left of this picture.

The PEX manifold

Not shown (of course, since I haven’t built it yet) is all the cabinetry that surrounds this area.

And for the non-geeks out there:

1. Dihydrogen monoxide is an incorrect way of saying H20 (water).
2. Majel Barrett is the voice of the ship’s computer in most of the later Star Trek stuff.
3. 40,000 btu’s per hour is the output of the old gas water heater.

More later. Nearly three inches of rain Saturday night and Sunday slowed us down a bit…but by golly…We have DOORS!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer