mass code?

joel_19

I have a customer with a small radiant section powered by a direct vent gas WH with internal coil. Does anybody know if this is leagal in Mass i vagely recall something about the coils needing to be double wall???

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Wild Bill

I believe if Glycol is in the system....

A double wall HX must be used in Mass. Please seek verification on this.
Bill

joel_19

Thanx

I called a bunch of wholesalers and no one had a clue i couldn't even get a price on one except at RE michael and they don't stock them. I'd rather do a boiler and indirect anyhow. Those direct vent tanks are big money and only last 5-7 years.

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Unknown

numbers?

It's tough to quote such exact numbers there!

The last company I worked for had hundreds of those kinds of systems in the field over twenty years of business. We weren't getting many calls on failed units. Some maintenance calls of course (burned out igniters, etc) but I only remember hearing of one tank failure in 3 years working there.
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Robert Brown, Co-Owner, RPA certified Radiant Designer

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NRT@maine.rr.com

joel_19

huh?

Gas water heaters have notorious short life spans. Some people here just change them every 5 years because they know it's gonna fail anyhow, so you might as well change it at a convienent time before it floods your basement. Who makes ones that won't fail? All i've seen are just cheap glass lined things nothing stainless or anyhthing.

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Constantin

Life Span depends on a number of things

I agree that gas water heaters can die quickly. One client of mine had a unit in MD feeding his ice cream shop with hot water (for the scoops). The unit was running pretty much continuously all day while the place was open. Every year the next one would fail, commercial, residential, etc. He said he had tried them all. In the end, he went for a quick-disconnect system and changed them yearly to avoid downtime.

Conversely, the house I bought had a dirty 10-year old gas water heater that still had not leaked despite a complete absence of PM. It sat on a dirt floor in a damp basement, and had rust popping off the powdercoat at the base. The flue was joke, the chimney a class-A CO hazard. Yet it continued to supply hot water until the day I shut it down, drained it, and prepped it for demo.

So I'll conjecture that water heater life depends a lot on duty cycle, water hardness, and PM. If the water is without contamination, your tank construction quality will dictate its life (i.e. accounting for degradation via oxygen). If the water hardness is high, that tank better get flushed and de-scaled regularly (or a softener system is installed). PM of the water heater is a great idea, I don't know why more people don't do it when the furnace is getting checked up (anodes and all that).

Lastly, there are always some other factors that can really kill heaters quickly, such as stray currents, external leaks dripping on them, and sour gas.

Unknown

just for background

The company usually spec'ed american water heater group heaters. Also some bradford whites, and bocks.

They were all over the country as well, so it's not a matter of local water quality (though the call I remember was related to that).

It's possible the people called local plumbers and we just never heard about it, but the localites never had quick death problems like that AFAIK.
_______________________________

Northeast Radiant Technology, LLC

Robert Brown, Co-Owner, RPA certified Radiant Designer

207.899.2328
NRT@maine.rr.com

Unknown

Truth, they just do not make them

like they used to.

I have five Trageser Copper tanks in a couple of houses that are over 30 years old and still running with out a problem. All you have to do is clean them out once in a while (cast iron burners last forever), replace a thermocouple every ten years. That is about it they just keep running and running.

Weezbo

It is my personal belife....

every manufacturer with a stated X amount of year warranty has a small tribe of engineers designing them to fail about five to six mins after the stated warranty:))) oops! DId i say that