Installed my first electric hot water heater in my life. Why thank you Mr Big intrusive Government.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My AO Smith, gas 40 gal hot water heater was installed in 2002. There was nothing special about it. Hot water heaters hadn’t changed since the 1940’s, maybe even earlier.

It finally rusted out and started leaking. Geez, have I had a shock waiting for me. Big gov (Federal regs) has completely turned the technology up side down. New tanks have air sensors that will shut the unit off. My plumber said he gets a lot of calls from customers without hot water. He indicated the new tanks are difficult and expensive to service. I’m confused & stunned. * Maintenance? What maintenance? You install the gas hot water tank and use it until it rusts out. * My plumber just smiled, and gently said, not any more.

Then I’m told by code ventilation pipes have to be installed in the front and back ceiling of the closet to draw in fresh air from the attic.

He saved the biggest kick to my tender Nads for last. By code the tank must be 18 inches off the floor. :eek: Uh that’s physically impossible. I can’t shorten the flue. The flue coming out of the attic has an asbestos wrapping. It’s in perfect condition. Been there since 1955 and poses no danger unless someone stupidly messes with it.
http://www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk/Libraries/AC-Library/Asbestos-Cement-Flue-Pipe-004.sflb.ashx

An abatement company would charge thousands to suit up and remove asbestos. Then you need a air quality test that is submitted to da government.

My plumber gently suggested an electric hot water tank. It eliminates all this government bullshit.

The Rheem Electric Tank was installed yesterday for $820. That includes installing a drip pan to protect the floor. It’s now mandatory by code. (I used this same plumber in 2002 to replace the tank last time)

Rheem how ironic. I got reamed all right, by my elected officials.

Electrician comes Monday to run the 220v. I don’t have any open slots on my panel. So, he’s installing a
6 slot sub panel. I’ll have 4 spares for future needs and that satisfies another code requirement. Your not supposed to have a maxed out panel. A home inspector would flag it when I eventually sell the house.

I expect to pay the electrician at least $500 or more. That’s if I’m lucky. I hope it’s not $800. :frowning:

Isn’t Homeownership wonderful? Gotta love how the government takes simple & proven technology and turns it into a money pit.

Anyone replacing a old technology hot water tank will enjoy the same experience.

2

Yeah, damn those elected officials selfishly trying to prevent you from killing yourself!

3

Uh, the old technology tanks were in service from the 1940’s to early 00’s. (maybe even the 1920’s? Not sure when the standard design was first used in construction)

There were no mass deaths. WAG I’d say less than 1% of the millions and millions of homes with hot water heaters.

This was a small problem that didn’t need an answer.

4

I baaaaarely squeeked by couple years ago when my water heater when phtht! Didn’t have to deal with all that stupid bs.

Based on my experience from when I worked in structural drying and mold remediation, someone, sometime in the future will be cursing the decision to put several hundred pounds of water in the attic.
Is your former waterheater closet not on an exterior wall? When we were told the vent pipes had to go to the attic were just ignored that(not just because its a really dumb and bad idea) and ran them through the wall to outside.

Sorry, I know that doesn’t help.

5

Yes, my hot water closet is in the middle of the house. Off the hallway.

It used to house my gas furnace. I got central Air & heat in 2004. The closet was too shallow for the air handler. Way to shallow. Like 12 inches. I had a package unit installed outside & connected to my ductwork. Package units have EVERYTHING needed in one metal box.

That package unit died three weeks ago. I’ve replaced my HVAC and hot water heater in the same month. Ouch.

The house was built in 1955. Extremely well made foundation and framing. But it does pose challenges for modern technology.

6

On a positive note.

This should be the last time I should ever have to deal with HVAC or hot water heaters.

I don’t expect to be in this house 20 years from now. I’ll probably be in an retirement home or an Urn on someone’s fireplace mantle. :wink:

7

So if there were only sporadic deaths, that could have been avoided by sensible code precautions, like having the heater off the floor so it doesn’t ignite leaking gas gathering low, that’s just fine? :rolleyes:

Here are some stats. I don’t have time to break it down and it doesn’t give you “deaths caused by very old water heaters”, but it’s better than a WAG. And it does include fires caused by water heating equipment.

8

I’m scratching my head because I replaced a gas heater in 2009 and 2015 and didn’t have to do any of that stuff. Put that sucker right on the floor, with the flue at the only ridiculous angle that worked with 8" overhead, and no extra venting.

Granted in both cases it was a crawlspace with moisture vents, so perhaps that satisfies ventilation requirements.

9

I distinctly remember my last apartment in the 1980’s had a warning sign posted on the door of the utility closet. We were not allowed to store anything in that closet. Absolutely nothing.

The maintenance men checked whenever they changed the HVAC filter.

I got a warning letter for storing my mop & bucket in there. Management’s biggest concern was cleaning supplies. But this apartment complex was taking no chances. Anything in that closet restricted air flow.

I wouldn’t store anything in a utility closet, even with a electric hot water heater.

10

There is no national code and in most cases there isn’t even a state wide code. It will depends on your local jurisdiction and what code they use. I’m building several distilleries who’s local jurisdiction is still using the 2012 code and i just did one past year that was on 2009. So just because something is a problem for someone else doesn’t mean it will effect you at least for a while.

As far as the complaints in the OP those are all pretty good code rules. The code is mostly written for new construction and particularly compared to a 1955 house a modern home is very tight and allows very little air infiltration that isn’t controlled. This means that the air consumed by your gas heater has to come from somewhere and that is typically the air you breathe so it is fighting you for the oxygen in your house. The simple solution is to give your heater its own air supply. Where the code is less helpful is when you are remodeling old homes which in your case probably leak like a sieve so there is plenty of excess air over your needs. The code tends to err on the side of safety. You could have gotten an infiltration test on your house and showed you had enough airflow that you didn’t need to add ventilation but it would have involved more then just your plumber.

11

I’m glad my daughters are grown and gone.

My wife & I rarely empty a 40 gallon hot water tank. The slower recovery time for electric tanks to heat water won’t be a significant issue.

Costs more to heat with electricity. But that doesn’t matter for us now. It would have been a concern when we were doing laundry every day.

I’d recommend electric hot water heaters for anyone with an older house. New construction homes are designed to ventilate properly for new hot water heaters.

12

We replaced ours with a tankless on-demand heater. No giant reservoir, so nothing to rust out and no floods (barring a pipe breaking). And we got a nice tax credit on it.

13

Last time I dealt with gas water heaters was about 10 years ago, so things may have changed. However, in Texas, at the time, the requirement for the water heater to be 18" from the ground was only for installations where gasoline or propane were stored. That is, garages, lawn equipment storage, and/or any instillation using LPG. Inside the living quarters of a house, it would be fine to put a gas water heater directly on a concrete floor. The flue had to be designed so that it would draw excess air from outside the combustion area (a minimum 1 inch vertical gap between the exhaust on the water heater and the flue so that room air would be drawn out with the exhaust). If the water heater was located in or above an inhabited area, the pressure relief valve had to be plumbed either outside the inhabited area or to an interior drain.

As I mentioned, about 10 years ago, I had a plumber replace the water heater in the attached garage. The plumber said he had to install vents to the attic (as mentioned in this thread) and that he had to plumb the PRV to outside the house. I argued with him, saying that the water heater was 18" off the floor (as required for the garage), the door to the closet that held the heater had a louvered vent on it (to provide adequate fresh air) and there was a 1" gap on the exhaust. I said that since the water heater was in the garage, there was no need to plumb the PRV anywhere as it was already located outside the inhabited area. I told him to show me the code that required what he said what had to be done. He said “OK, I’ll need to go back to the shop” and left.
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The next day, the company sent another plumber out who finished the job without doing anything the first guy said was needed, but did say he needed to install an “expansion tank” because the city had installed “anti-drainback” valves on the water supply and the tank would begin leaking without one. I remembered hearing that on the news, so I said that was fine.

My point is sometimes the plumber and/or electrician do not fully understand the code. That is, what the first guy wanted to do would have “met the code”, but it was not “required by the code”. I do not know the specifics on the OPs installation, but my understanding is that the 18" from the floor requirement only applies for LPG installations or locations where gasoline or other heavier than air flammable gases or fumes are being stored. Methane (natural gas) is lighter than air (not a whole lot, but enough so that it will not pool or accumulate in low areas), so raising the water heater 18" does not reduce the risk from explosion in these installations. At least, that was how it was explained to me when I replaced my first gas water heater well over 30 years ago. I don’t know if the code has changed in those years, but I doubt the physics of the matter has.

14

Could be worse–one locality nearby just banned oil or gas hookups in new construction.
Just a minor point, but water is a solid around here 4 months of the year.
I still haven’t seen the Mr. Fusion Home Energy source on Amazon…

15

Rebuilt Mama’s house a couple of years ago. (It was supposed to be a remodel, but… Seriously, I’d have bulldozed and started over if I were making the decisions. It was bad.)

The old water heater was fifty years old and not well-placed. Electric.

Since I was running all new plumbing anyway, and an electrician was rewiring everything anyway, I installed a tankless heater and he wired it in. A good unit for a small household (2 people, one bathroom,) was under $200, and wiring added another couple of Benjamins to the cost. No tank to rust, bust, and flood. No element to burn out if the tank goes dry and someone forgets to throw the breaker. No lost floor space - it’s on the wall. And no waiting for a tankful to reheat - it’s on demand. And it’s energy efficient.

If/when I have to replace my water heater, it will be tankless/on demand. Having seen Ma’s in action for the past couple of years, I’m honestly flabbergasted that anyone is buying tank heaters any more.

But I’ve never dealt with gas water heating - I’m in the country, and gas isn’t piped in. I have a propane tank for the stove and heater. So maybe I’m missing the benefits of having gas water heating.

16

I wonder what the state of things in Canada is these days? Because I assume I’ll need a water heater in a few years, and I’m a DIY’er.

17

So, by your estimate, those old-fashioned hot water heaters caused tens of thousands of deaths.

Good job, government.

18

If anyone remembers, we just replaced our whole electrical service (fuse) box. I posted some questions about it earlier, here.

Over the decades there were odd little changes to the code that we needed to upgrade to stay current. One strange one was the new requirement that GFI circuits must be no more than 6 feet from an outdoor hot tub. That required installation of another box under the deck since the original one was near the main fusebox.

I’m perplexed over that one. Why would it matter which “end” of the wiring? Maybe we’re saving 0.5 microseconds before it trips, but it doesn’t seem worth it.

Oh, and the old circuits that are allegedly responsible for thousands of house fires per year? Nah, you can grandfather those in. Sometimes building codes make no sense to me.

19

I’ll pass on the electrical question since that’s not my specialty except to say I just finished a kitchen remodel and we did GFCI at the panel rather than at the outlets so I’m not certain why that would be ok in one application but not others.

As far as the grandfathering it is based on the realization that you can’t practically expect people to spend huge amounts of money on their homes and business every three years but if the new stuff is done right the first time then over the years we’ll be getting safer. Of course the exception is that if you do tear something apart you aren’t allowed to put it back wrong just because that’s how you found it.

This makes sense but can be annoying based on what was there originally. My house had the dining room and living room circuits routed through the kitchen so when I did my down to the studs remodel demo and discovered it I changed my mind and didn’t get a permit because I couldn’t afford to redo the electrical and drywall in those rooms as well. Not to mention the problems i had bringing the kitchen up to code and probably would have found as i got into the walls in the other rooms. The down side of code here is that due to this requirement i haven’t had inspections and the city missed out on 5k in permit fees. On the other hand i used all of the same crews and site supervision I use on my other jobs so I was done to the same standards.

20

Ouch!!

As much of a pain as the rules are, they truly are there for safety reasons, I would think. But you’d also think there’d be some way of grandfathering in where the structure truly does not allow for them.

The drip pan ins your friend. When our heater sprung a leak, it had drenched the floor in the furnace room and soaked the carpet just outside. When we replaced the unit, the new one had a drip pan. If it leaks, the drip pan routes it to the existing floor drain.

Our house was built in 1995, and the replacement was about 5 years ago. We didn’t have the hassle with the flue etc., so maybe the rules change was before then? (your posting suggested it was after 2002).