Tankless water heater condensate vs. non condensate

[Music] [Applause] [Music] well hello in this video i will be talking about two different types of tankless water heaters you've got a condensing water heater and a non-condensing water heater now what's the difference there i have homeowners ask me all the time i have homeowners call in and say hey every time i run my water heater i've got a little drip of water coming out of this tube at the bottom what's that all about i think i've got a leak well no you probably don't have a leak you probably have a condensing unit it's kind of like an air conditioner what it is is an energy rating and we have a new scale out there it's called uh the uef which is the uniform energy factor and there's a whole lot of stuff involved in this uh there's a big giant equation here uh if you are a mathematician and you want to try to figure this thing out uh go for it but it's kind of based off of a bunch of different factors and it's a 24 hour period and they they run water but it it basically gives you something to tell you how efficient a water heater is or say a washing machine a dishwasher or a clothes dryer so to kind of get a little more idea of what's going on here i'm gonna take us over here we're gonna talk uh about the old conventional water heater first now this is probably what a lot of people are more used to it's the old tank style or conventional water heater this one's a 50 gallon this one runs off of propane of course you can also get them in natural gas propane is going to cost you about twice as much as natural gas so just remember that now those uef codes those percentages uh it says displayed in a decimal you're not going to see a whole lot of that in the advertising when you're looking around for these water heaters because they're going to tell you oh it's glass lined it's got this feature in this feature is because those uh energy factor codes are really really low uh a heater like this a gas tank heater is going to get you somewhere in between 0.55 and 0.70 uh that's not really a good energy efficiency code most of your tankless water heaters are going to run somewhere around 0.8 to like 0.95 so a lot more energy efficient than these guys and you also have the electric um water heater and they get a little bit of a higher rating on your conventional electric water heaters it's the same factor same scale but it's based off of energy and stuff those things are going to run somewhere around 0.8 and 0.9 on that energy factor but it's a different power supply i'm kind of just talking about gas for now so let's go back over here to our two water heaters and i'm going to show you the big difference on them all right back to our tankless water heaters here now i have an example of each different type i have a non-condensating and a condensating tankless water heater here now these are different brands they're different name brands so they're different colors uh everybody's got their own color and they are slightly different sizes but most tankless water heaters are pretty much the same on the inside the components may look a little different but they serve the same function now uh our uefs on this our universal energy factor your non-condensating this particular one here is going to land right about 0.82 which is a lot higher than that conventional tank style this one over here which is the condensating it's going to land right about 0.95 which is a lot better than all of them uh this the condensating ones are the most efficient water heaters pretty much out there that you can get right now um so what makes that happen what makes these different all right well let's open them up we'll start with this non-condensating one first and uh just some of your basic components here now pretty much all water heaters tankless water heaters have these basic components you're going to have your motherboard that's the little computer brain right there that tells it when to turn on and when to do what it needs to do they're all going to have some form of circuit board some form of motherboard the next thing is back behind here there's a fan motor which is blowing air up through this to push the exhaust out you've got a gas valve that's going to open and close to let gas in you've got your manifold here and that's going to distribute that gas and regulate those pressures above that you have your combustion chamber now this is where the fire actually is i like to call it flame box sometimes you have an igniter and you have your two flame rods which are little rods that indicate whether it's burning or not now that igniter is like a charcoal grill gas grill igniter just shoots a big old spark like that uh across there and that's how it ignites now it's all electric you don't have to do anything with it it cuts on and does it so these things don't have pilot lights that's another question i get asked there's no pilot light it's all an electrical ignition all right so above your combustion chamber you're gonna have your uh heat exchanger some people call that the core copper core up here that's where all the magics happen uh your cold water is gonna come in and it's got tubes that loop back and forth back and forth back and forth and it's got little veins on it as the hot air rises up through there and then comes out the exhaust it's going to heat that water now a lot of people think that oh i got my controller over here set at 120 that's going to make 120 degree water no actually that's running at a lot higher temperatures than 120. it's got another little pipe down here that it lets cold water come back into a bypass it mixes the water back together to get that desired 120 or whatever you've got it set at 130 140 uh water temperature right here at the base where it's actually coming out the water heater so this water when it leaves that is actually going to be hotter than that desired temperature and it's going to mix a little coal back with it to temper it down but since this heat exchanger is sitting right on top of here hot gas is going up any kind of moisture anything that would get in there is being blown out the front sometimes on uh like a really damp day like a rainy day or whatever you might see steam just just blowing out of that and that's perfectly normal for that half and just have some steam coming out because it's burning that moisture off in there that's why it's non-compensating it's cooking that moisture out and blowing it back out into the air but that's basically how this one works so let's go over this other guy here open him up same basic components here too you've got a motherboard now this one's a lot bigger uh because this one has the onboard uh controller where you can run the temperature up and down it's got the little display that we should be flashing 120. this one doesn't have an external controller uh which i think is kind of neat it's all contained uh behind here you're gonna have your fan back up in here you're gonna have gas valve uh over here and then of course your gas manifold works just the same and then above that is your combustion chamber where all your flame is you've got your electrical niter you've got your flame rod and your little sight glass that you can look in and see if it's burning and then above that you've got uh your heat exchanger your little copper core it's copper this here too just like that they've got little ceramic heaters that'll kick on when you're not using it if it gets too cold to um keep that thing from freezing now here's the big difference above that is a secondary heat exchanger and it's stainless steel uh and what it's doing is preheating that water with the exhaust the heat coming up through this one is just the same as that it's gonna be hotter than whatever you've got it set at uh and it's gonna be burning the moisture off but when it gets up to here that is going to be 60 65 degree water cold water coming in from uh under your house or whatever out of the road or it could be a well um and so that's cold water coming into that exhaust this exhaust is going to be a lot cooler than this exhaust but what happens when you preheat that water yes it's energy efficient yes it's great but you create condensate it's just like an air conditioner air conditioner on a house or air conditioner on your car it's going to have a little bit of water dripping off of it and that's perfectly normal perfectly fine it's got a little drain over here that picks that water up little pan that catches that water and it puts it down into here which is kind of like a p-trap it's a little thing that holds the water they call it a neutralizer because uh this condensate is actually a little bit acidic it's not acidic enough to burn through anything but then it's going to run down and there's actually a hook up for a little tube down here so if you've got one of these you're going to have two pipes hanging down at the bottom one's for your relief and one's your condensate line most of the time your condensate line is smaller it's going to be a half inch so when this thing is running it's going to build condensate and you're going to have a little bit of water drip drip drip drip dripping out of the bottom perfectly normal now like i said that water is acidic so it might kill your grass right there underneath because these are external heaters it might kill that grass right there underneath but i've heard that rose bushes absolutely love it so of course you want to watch out for having bushes or anything around these you don't want to get up around here and start causing problems but that's basically it that secondary heat exchanger is what is giving you that higher energy efficient rating now something i have noticed when people go i thought these things were going to be so much better uh on their energy consumption well they are it's just with a tankless water heater you don't ever have to worry about running out of hot water it's not a tank holding 50 gallons you can make as much hot water with this thing as you want to it's just going to keep running keep burning so i've noticed that a lot of people when they have tankless they say stay in the showers longer they wash more dishes they use more hot water so uh because you're not going to run out and that's kind of what happens to your efficiency it's it's really it's wild but i mean who doesn't want to take a long shower so that's pretty much it this one's more efficient because it's got that second heat exchanger uh really neat thing uh i really like these and there's no difference in the install just you got to hook that little tube up now if you have an interior one which i highly recommend those because it keeps it out of the bugs and the sunshine and the weather and elements and all that but you do have to run a dedicated condensate line for this one you can't tie it into the relief because of that relief wherever to open up it's going to blow back up that condensate line fill that box up flood your water heater out you don't want that to happen uh if you got any more questions let me know uh and i'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Plumbing Solutions, LLC

Views: 3,249

Keywords: tankless

Id: EOLNj_IEPWA

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2022