We installed an on demand water heater about 22 months ago, and have had freezing problems with it, even though the manufacture says its good to go down to 5 degrees F.  Seems like anytime it went below 20, we would have freezing problems.    The first winter, it froze and damaged the heat exchanger, water valve, and hydro ignitor.  Trying to get warranty repair out of Bosch is like pissing up a rope and learned very quickly, no matter what, they will not honor their warranty nor will their resellers go to bat for you.

I was able to make a repair to the water valve to stop most of the leaking but there are still some leaks at the fittings along with the hydro ignitor but it still works.  I figured until I could come up with something to prevent the freezing, there was no point replacing the parts in case it froze up again.

With the use of some Frotex heat tape, and some heat elements, I think I have the freezing problem solved so I ordered a new water valve and hydroignitor.

Since the house is about 100 years old and is a log frame, on a rock fondation, on grade, it was more difficult than it appears to run the plumbing to/from the water heater.  The first phase of this project was to get the water heater mounted and working.  Covered elsewhere in this blog is the propane problem this heater uncovered.  Once I got it mounted and working, we quickly learned he had to take care of our propane system before continuing with the water heater.  I got it working so we no longer had to try and take showers with a 19 gallon, 120 volt, 1500 watt, electric tank heater.  I had no problem taking Army showers but the teenager kids of ours dont understand that concept so when it would take 4 hours between heating cycles on that water heater, I decided to go with an on demand system.

This was the first phase of the water heater.  The water pipes were fished through a gap in the rock foundation at grade level.   Even with heat tape and pipe insulation,  the pipes could still freeze.  And even if the pipes didnt freeze, the water heater would, even with its built in freeze protection.



The propane line came in to the house kind of in the same area of the water pipes but because of how it was done, I had to tap in to the line along the rock foundation.   I also Tee'd off of it to run a line to the living room heater.  At the time, that heater heated the whole place.

This whole process showed I had freezing problems and a few propane issues.  I had several leaks in the piping coming in to the house and also learned the regulators were not done correctly.  Since propane is pretty dangerous stuff, I decided to attack that problem first.

We also had a wet basement issue so while digging out an area for pipes, we decided to dig out all along the back and put in drain tile so that make the project take even longer.

We took the pipes below grade and wrapped them really good with Frostex heat tape.  We used a couple of flexible corrigated copper pipes used with tank heater installations, joined them end to end, wrapped with heat tape, then covered with closed cell pipe wrap and then inserted them in to grey electrial conduit.  I have a pipe fitter buddy that said it was a pretty cool way of addressing my problem and said I could make it as a pipe wrapper someday.  I learned that that is actually a union trade.



The next step or phase was to box this off.   One reason was for looks, another for physical protection, and the other to help in freeze protection.  So we built a 'box' to put around it and back filled like you see here.



Lucky for me, my step son was up this weekend and he is a carpenter and was able to take my poor attempt at a box and make it usable.  I should have let him just design the whole thing but after 10 months of trying to finish off this project, I just had him do the best he could with what I had so we could get the back filling done.  It was also good to have him there to help with the backfill.  OK, he did most of it :).

Next step is to replace the leaky components and we will see how this all works out.