A Tale of Two Water Heaters

Did you know that there are three types of venting for hot water heaters? I didn't which lead to the following fun activity over the weekend.

First, we have been renting a water heater since 4 the past 8 years. At a little over $220/yr, that's $1760 I've thrown away. I always intended to replace the rented with one we bought but never got around to it at the old house.

For the new house I was planning on starting out with a new purchased unit right away. Unfortunately I got some misleading information from the rental company and didn't read the purchase agreement correctly so we ended up renting the one that was already installed. When I asked the rental company how much to buy it out they told me $1100 so I told them to take a hike. They are also going to charge me $60 to close the account, and would have charged me another $100 to remove the old water heater.

I decided to remove and replace it on my own.

I'm not a plumber or pipe-fitter but I've done some plumbing in the past, mostly successful. I figured it would be a unplug the old and plug-in the new situation and I could handle it.

So Friday I drained the old 60 gallon take. Naturally there is no drain in the house below the level of the tank so I drained it into buckets then dumped the bucket outside. 1.5hrs. Turned off the water supply in the house and cut the pipes.

Soldered some threaded connectors onto the 3/4" water pipes, dropped the new one in place and hooked it up with some SS hoses. I couldn't get the sediment collection black gas pipe off the old heater and home hardware had closed for the night, so I filled it with water and called it a night.

Saturday morning I went out to home hardware, picked up the yellow teflon tape for working with gas connections, the black pipe bits I needed to hook up the gas and some ABS pipe to complete the duct work (uh oh).

At home I hooked up the gas, checked it with a soap and water spray, hooked the ABS up for the vent and fired it up. I was really happy that I'd got the whole thing done without swearing or leaking. The vent at the top seemed warm but not too bad.

Put my tools away and waited for the hot water to flow.

First sign of trouble, Rosemary says "I see smoke in the backyard". Hmm. Take a look at the water heater. The ABS that I'd bought that morning is melting. Did I buy the wrong ABS? Nope, the old stuff is melting as well. Hmm. Turn off water heater. Check manual. Check Internet. Oops.

Turns out there are three kinds of venting. Conventional, Direct & Power Venting. This site has pictures of all three. You definitely need to ensure that you have the correct type of venting for your application.

It turns out my old one was a power vent, but I'd bought a conventional vent. My fault for buying it at HD and not finding someone there to help my pick the right one.

Drained it (no fun). Returned to HD and picked up a power vent unit. First one was $599, power vent was $779 (6 yr warranty). No problems hooking it up. I laughed. I still think it's funny. Good lesson.