Taking Large Water Heaters Apart... Fun Pics!

JohnNY

Check out the heat exchangers on these PVI storage/heater units. We're installing them on a project in Cooper Square, NYC. The engineers spec'd them and had them delivered to the site but they don't fit down the stairs. So...here we are taking them apart to get them into place. But check out those heat exchangers. Pretty cool.

EBEBRATT-Ed

The first one I tangled with was in a school in MA installed in 86. It had some weird oil burner on it must have been made overseas because I never saw another one before or since. Could have been a burner made by PVI for all I know. Anyhow the burner was a dog, nobody could make it work so it's long gone.

That left a bad taste in my mouth for PVI, but it was really just the burner.

We had another one in a school we changed the tube bundle in that one . Fun stuff. Thew weigh a few lbs.

That's why we send people to engineering school so they can forget how to use a tape measure.

Screw the contractor, they will get it in somehow. That;s how they think

retiredguy

I hated PVI's. The ones I worked on were a darker shade of yellow and a deep red/brown for the trim. The red burners were a pain in the a**. Most of the tanks were short lived as were the heating coils. We replaced many of the tube bundles. It got so bad that the company refused to sell them any more.

Early on, one of their tricks to keep the relief valve from lifting when an expansion tank was not in the system was for them to supply a very small relief valve set 25 PSI lower than the tanks relief valve, install it in the drain line ahead of the drain valve and pipe it to a drain. As the water pressure increased as the water in the tank heated, that small relief valve would relieve just enough to keep the tank pressure below the relief valve lift setting. They even made up a name to call that relief valve, but I can't remember what the name was. We were told not to tell the customer that we installed that device.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@retiredguy

YES, the famous red burner. Don't know who made it but they were awful. I only worked on 1 of them and I couldn't make it do anything right

JohnNY

These are actually the 5th and 6th PVIs I'm installing for this one client, and honestly, the factory startup guys don't seem to have an easy time getting them going either. But, I have to say, they look like a nice piece of engineering.

Shane_2

@JohnNY
Hopefully there is never a problem, but I would assume PVI would stand behind their product better than the other company did not too long ago.

EdTheHeaterMan

Looks like you cant put them in a tight mechanical room. How much clearance do you need in front of the tank in order to remove that tube bundle/firebox unit? I'm sure you have already taken that into consideration but I wonder how many were installed by different contractors where that was not accounted for? "The engineering drawing said to put it there so we did and now we can't take the thing apart without removing the entire tank"

Do engineers ever look that far in the future when putting that line on a piece of paper?

Just an observation

Yours truly,
Mr.ED

neilc

the engineer might look,
then the architect draws a wall or ceiling there anyways,
no offences , , ,

JohnNY

Shane_2 said:

@JohnNY
Hopefully there is never a problem, but I would assume PVI would stand behind their product better than the other company did not too long ago.

Haha. Yeah. I think PVI is enjoying a very good reputation these days. I've been happy so far. The "other company" is good too. I just had a bad experience. One out of many. What can you do?

nicholas bonham-carter

If you had been in charge of the design, and specifications, would you have chosen some different equipment, and what type for the same performance?—NBC

ethicalpaul

Those are great pics. Thankfully you were able to disassemble them in order to get them downstairs

bburd

When I worked for a large, well run A&E firm, one of the in-house architectural design standards was to allow sufficient tube pulling space in mechanical rooms for steel boilers, chillers, shell-and-tube heat exchangers and similar equipment. Another was adequate access to get that equipment in and out.

This was also on our quality control checklists. 

JohnNY

nicholas bonham-carter said:

If you had been in charge of the design, and specifications, would you have chosen some different equipment, and what type for the same performance?—NBC

I sent a proposal for two Lochinvar Armor commercial water heaters to plug into the existing two 120-gallon storage tanks (which we've now removed and discarded for some reason). I guess it wasn't expensive enough for them so they had the Engineers spec the job. Now they've spent 3x my price in material costs, plus my $30,000 in labor, plus the rigging company, plus the cost to fix a 48" x 36" hole in a 7" concrete slab. Yup. That's how they got them into the cellar. Through the floor. Whatevs. What do I know. I can only make suggestions.

neilc

I have a fancoil unit that we had to cut the filter door in half,
cuz other duct work is run solid up under it,
I changed that filter today.
you should see some of the other gymnastics to get to others thru ceiling hatches, or snugged against walls, or the ceiling so high you can't release the tile to get up in there,
dammitt,
ceiling looks great through ! ! !

Kickstand55

Engineers engineer things so we can re-engineer things. When things go wrong, they call in more engineers. You may know this, but, we're better at it than them and fix things to make them look good.
Lock the door and keep them out. wink: