Looking for tips and sanity check before I spend a bunch of money.
I have a slow leak behind one of my walls and the only way to get to it is to tear out a tiled shower or tear out the wall behind the water heater. I know as soon as I touch that 20 year-old heater it's going to fail so I'm thinking it's time to upgrade to a tankless.
From what I'm reading, a condensing unit will be better for where I want to put it.
I'm looking at some standard 8-10gpm Rheems I can order online. I think my well can only do like 6gph so I don't see much of a reason to go much bigger on the WH.
Of course, because I live in a renovated barn, everything has to be more complicated.
This is where the WH currently lives. That little door on the right side of the loft is the HVAC closet and where I'd like to mount the tankless.
Inside the HVAC closet - above the door. This is where I'd like to mount it. It's the spot that's least likely to be in the way for future HVAC repairs or replacement. Light fixture can be relocated to the side wall or ceiling.
This is looking up through that door. PVC lines are the exhaust for the two propane furnaces. The 4" pipe going through the old 8" is the existing WH vent from below.
The new WH would be mounted just above to door jamb. You can just see the lightbulb from the pic above. Plan would be to 90 over and then 90 up the 8" chimney pipe with the exhaust, and possibly the intake.
Looking at Rheem's install manual, it doesn't have any max lengths or number of bends in the exhaust/intake and what I'm doing is pretty much exactly what they're showing here, so that shouldn't be a problem. The only thing they spec is the exhaust terminating 12" above the intake. That might be a problem with the cap that's on that chimney pipe.
So one question I have is - the two furnaces have propane burners for emergency heat only. They exhaust through the PVC lines you see in the pics, but they're just intaking combustion air straight out of the closet. The closet door is vented so they can pull out of the house and I believe that 8" chimney pipe also allows air to flow in.
Could I do the same for the WH? Just vent the exhaust and let it pull in combustion air from the room?
The propane line for the existing WH actually tees off from the same line as the HVAC in that closet so I should be able to remove the old line at the tee and route to the new WH from there. It'll only be about 4' of pipe. I guess I need to see what the new WH needs as far as pressure to make sure that line can handle it.
I'll have to run some temporary pex through that closet to tie back in to the existing supply and hot water lines. Eventually I'll have the other side of that wall opened up for a bath remodel and will get them buried then, but that's a good year out.
Anything stupid about this plan? Or anything I should look at doing differently?
I have a slow leak behind one of my walls and the only way to get to it is to tear out a tiled shower or tear out the wall behind the water heater. I know as soon as I touch that 20 year-old heater it's going to fail so I'm thinking it's time to upgrade to a tankless.
From what I'm reading, a condensing unit will be better for where I want to put it.
I'm looking at some standard 8-10gpm Rheems I can order online. I think my well can only do like 6gph so I don't see much of a reason to go much bigger on the WH.
Of course, because I live in a renovated barn, everything has to be more complicated.
This is where the WH currently lives. That little door on the right side of the loft is the HVAC closet and where I'd like to mount the tankless.
Inside the HVAC closet - above the door. This is where I'd like to mount it. It's the spot that's least likely to be in the way for future HVAC repairs or replacement. Light fixture can be relocated to the side wall or ceiling.
This is looking up through that door. PVC lines are the exhaust for the two propane furnaces. The 4" pipe going through the old 8" is the existing WH vent from below.
The new WH would be mounted just above to door jamb. You can just see the lightbulb from the pic above. Plan would be to 90 over and then 90 up the 8" chimney pipe with the exhaust, and possibly the intake.
Looking at Rheem's install manual, it doesn't have any max lengths or number of bends in the exhaust/intake and what I'm doing is pretty much exactly what they're showing here, so that shouldn't be a problem. The only thing they spec is the exhaust terminating 12" above the intake. That might be a problem with the cap that's on that chimney pipe.
So one question I have is - the two furnaces have propane burners for emergency heat only. They exhaust through the PVC lines you see in the pics, but they're just intaking combustion air straight out of the closet. The closet door is vented so they can pull out of the house and I believe that 8" chimney pipe also allows air to flow in.
Could I do the same for the WH? Just vent the exhaust and let it pull in combustion air from the room?
The propane line for the existing WH actually tees off from the same line as the HVAC in that closet so I should be able to remove the old line at the tee and route to the new WH from there. It'll only be about 4' of pipe. I guess I need to see what the new WH needs as far as pressure to make sure that line can handle it.
I'll have to run some temporary pex through that closet to tie back in to the existing supply and hot water lines. Eventually I'll have the other side of that wall opened up for a bath remodel and will get them buried then, but that's a good year out.
Anything stupid about this plan? Or anything I should look at doing differently?
