A local contractor installed a new furnace and water heater for me on 1/21/2013. The install appeared to go well. The furnace is keeping our house warm and the water heater runs without making crazy noise and it is producing hot water. All is perfect in the world, well not quite…

While checking out the water heater (AO Smith GDHE-50) I noticed that the lower side connect was quite cold, the brass drain was very cold too. My three other water heaters never exhibited anything like this when they had hot water in them. The valve and the side connectors were quite warm when the unit was at standby.

American water heater company, the maker of the water heater I installed issued me a return authorization number for the water heater that would not run when installed per the instructions. I installed the new one (1/5/2013) and this one works better (it will start), but still not great. It makes noise when starting and the flame is quite yellow and has bad shape. I have posted videos of the start and flame for technical support to look at.

Ben, a plumber from K&S came by and spent 3 hours going over my install and inspecting the water heater. He found nothing wrong with my install, whew! After talking to technical support we got the unit running by removing the intake and restricting the exhaust. We had hot water, but the install wasn’t going to pass code as it deviated from the installation instructions.

Water heaters go virtually unnoticed, that is until they don’t work!

In a previous posting I mentioned running into an issue with our water heater failing to draft when all the exhaust fans and clothes dryer running.  I did some research and through testing I thought the entire issue could be resolved by adding more “make-up air”.   Thus I added a 6″ duct into our mechanical room.  This was in addition to our existing 5″. You would think that after having ~48″ sq. of open hole to the outside would mitigate any possible negative pressure, but you would be wrong.  The water heater still failed to draft in worst case CAZ testing. I called a local HVAC contractor to evaluate.  They spent 3 hours trying different things, including adding 3′ to our chimney, but no joy!