Viessmann Vitodens HX Recall

Sorry to see this.. Stopped installing Them years ago, Just goes to show you that nobody is Perfect,Not even Viessmann...Time to change the Light bulb display in the Viessmann Factory tour.

1000 bucks for the Change out ? How about the Loss in confidence in this product from the Customers.

Our local Distributor/Rep. did not even know about this,Do you think they should have notified us about this first ?...Not the Social network..

Ouch! I've got seven that qualify.

Thanks for the heads-up, Paul. At least I'm one step ahead of my customers.

I’m still stumped on the wording “voluntary recall”. Voluntary and Recall in the same sentence? I like Viessmann, have Viessmann in my home, my office/work, couple hundred out in the field

PerryHolzman said:

I would also like to point out the timing of this recall. In the spring so you have all summer and early fall to deal with the installed units. Things could be much more difficult (especially customer relations) if announced in the fall or during the winter (not to mention a failure during the winter).

@GW It's voluntary because no regulatory agency has forced their hand at this stage. I actually give Viessmann a lot of credit for this - and the fact that they will pay the heating contractors a reasonable amount to replace the heat exchangers.

Overall, this is likely at least a $750,000 direct cost to Viessman recall - and may be more than $1 Million.

Have a great day,

Perry

About the cost of one of the bobsleds they sponsor

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes said:

Oh, please!

My question is, why are these HX failing? Is the metal too thin? Was there a mistake with the alloy?

While there are several things that can go wrong.... something I have often seen happen in modern power plant heat exchangers could easily have happened.

There is actually a small selection of alloys that really work well from a corrosion resistance standpoint in a condensing boiler application. A key feature of all of them is that they need to be chemically treated (pickled) to bring out their best corrosion resistance properties.

Pickling used to be done automatically to a lot of alloys because the companies producing them wanted to produce the best alloy possible.

However, with the advent of all the regulations many of the pickling chemicals now require special controls and procedures, and pickling is an expensive process.

Many a time some young engineer figured they could save money by ordering the same alloy... without the pickling. The metal always fails prematurely compared to the old alloys (which may never have chemically corroded at all in the same service).

I note another problem is that any welding done to a pickled alloy needs to be appropriately cleaned and treated as well... or the weld and the weld affected zone fails.

Also, in some cases they change the production process which affect alloy grain formation and corrosion resistance properties.

Now I don't know that the above is the situation with the newer Vitodens HXs. I've just seen that situation in power plants and other large industrial plants over and over...

Have a great day,

If manufacturers of aluminum block HXs offered that kind of jack, we'd all be in a better spot.

I've let 6 of 7 of my customers know and they've been pretty cool with it. The seventh customer is very tense and this would set him off.

I've also told them all to install a CO detector close to the boiler to play it safe.

Thanks for the update, Paul.

Paul thank you for posting this even though it may have been a bit premature. I (a wholesaler) have worked through a couple of these so far would like to share a few points of interest on this recall compared to other manufacturers.

The first is really simple. This was done BEFORE a problem existed.

Next, contractors can actually get their honest pay from it. I did not believe this at first.

Finally, kind of a stretch here I know..... It can be a great learning opportunity for new techs. You can turn this change out into a fully paid day of instruction.

I’m a customer and love my boiler because of the high efficiency, low monthly gas bills.
My house stays at 72F and comfortable.
My contractor contacted me about the recall sent his service man to do the change out, which took about an hour. I’m thinking he may be making some money, and has a loyal installing contractor, he should.
I made the right choice