Water Heater Problems

Talking to people at a neighborhood barbeque a couple of weeks ago and the subject of rent control comes up, not too surprising since some of the folks are landlords of one sort or another. They might own a couple of houses or a duplex or some such. I've known several people who have gotten into this and they all claim it is good way to make money. I never thought it was worth the hassle. Just tending to my own house is a real pain in the tukas.

Right now I am trying to figure out what to do about the my stupid water heater. The water heater that came with house lasted for like 25 years before it sprung a leak and had to be replaced. I did it my self, it's not terribly difficult. Once you drain the water out they are like an empty beer can. There are three pipes (hot water, cold water and the gas line) and the exhaust flue to connect and you are ready to go. Problems started showing up shortly thereafter and intermittently ever since. The old water heater was totally mechanical. The new one has a thin film of electronics applied over the mechanics and this is where the problem arises. Every once in a while, the tiny electronic brain would decide that one of the sensors was not operating properly and it would shut off the gas, the water would go cold and I when I discovered this betrayal I would fly into a rage. Turn the dial on the control box to Off and then wait a few minutes for the thermocouple to cool down and stop producing energetic electrons. When everything has died down, you can relight the pilot and you are back in business. So what's wrong with the sensor? Who knows? The thing will run for another year or so before it flames out again.

If there really was a problem with the sensor, the water heater should not have continued to run after being restarted. I suspect there is some electrical connection, somewhere in this black box, that is weak and whenever the temperature makes a big change, the contraction of the metal bits means it loses contact and the heater loses its mind. But why does it start up again when I relight the pilot? Was my body radiating enough warmth to cause the metal to expand and reconnect? Or was it just my aura having a psychic effect on the electrons in the immediate area?

Now it's developed a new problem: the controller just shuts down, no flashing trouble codes, the status LED just goes black. Restarting it has gotten to be more difficult and has to be done several times a week. I thought about calling Whirlpool, but I've never gotten any satisfaction from them before, and I would liable to start screaming at whatever unfortunate happens to answer the phone, and that's not going to do anyone any good. I could order a new controller and sensors and replace the ones I have, but how do I know these are going to be any better? I think I'm going to go talk to George Morlan, the Water Heater King, see if he has any advice on the subject. He'll probably want to sell me a new water heater. As long as it's not a Whirlpool, I'll probably buy it.

Acetylene & Me

Me with a bottle of acetylene between my legs.
I'm wearing gloves because the tank is cold.

Osmany has been fighting with the water heater using a MAP gas torch and he's not getting anywhere. Time to break out the big gun. So I borrow Jack's Prest-O-Lite torch which burns acetylene, which requires a tank, regulator and hose. I borrow those as well. Soldering half inch pipe where the total length of connected pipe is less that 20 feet? Then a MAP gas torch is just fine. Soldering 3/4" pipe that is connected to 200 feet of copper pipe? Then you need the big gun.

A prudent person would have secured the tank to the bed of a truck. We didn't have a truck handy. I might have been able to secure it in the back seat using the seatbelts and some rope, but it was only a short jaunt across town. We couldn't put it in the trunk because if you lay the tank on it's side WeIrD tHiNgS could happen. Criminently, let's just go. If we get in a car wreck that is serious enough to break open the tank, I'll likely be dead before it blows up. If we get in a less serious car wreck the tank could easily injure me, but not any worse than your average automobile accident. Just don't have a wreck, Osmany,

Efing Whirlpool

Water heater flamed out again this morning. Fine, time to see if Whirlpool has a solution for this problem that has been going on for years. Call customer service and the first thing Robo-cop wants me to do is tell them my phone number. WTF? Everybody and their dog all over the world has caller ID and these clowns can't figure out what my phone number is? This isn't good. I get to a person in short order, who transfers me to 'water heater technical support' where I get to listen to some horribly distorted muzak. Why do they do that? Is it because they are too cheap to buy a decent radio? Or is it a deliberate attempt to drive people away?

Whatever. After a few minutes Robo-cop comes back on the line and asks if I would like to have them call me back instead of just waiting. Sure, that would put a stop to the noise coming out of my phone. And hey, it appears Robo-cop knows my phone number after all. Bozos.

A few minutes later I get a call back and the operator starts interrogating me: name, rank, serial number, address, blah, blah. I answer her first couple of questions, but then I tell her no more, I want to talk about the water heater. We exchange a bit more and then it becomes apparent that they still don't have a solution for this problem. Call me when you have one.

I suspect there is a 'weak' electrical connection somewhere between the controller and the sensor and any little change in temperature causes the connection to fail which causes the controller to flag the sensor as bad. Then I come out and glare at it, and the connector contracts in fright, contact is restored and the water heater lights up again.

I could be wrong about all this, but I can't imagine what else could be causing these intermittent failures. I suppose it's time to get out the soldering iron and make some new connections.

Norman at Nor-Mon

Failed Furnace Igniter Control Relay

I've had a spate of electrical problems recently. The hot water heater I replaced a few years ago has gone out and I had to relight it three or four times in the last month. Since it seems to work fine most of the time, I suspect a connection in the wires that lead to the temperature sensors is at fault. The weather turned cold about a month ago, the water heater is in the garage, so it's going to feel those temperature changes. The best I can imagine right now is the change in temperature caused the metal in the connectors to contract just enough to lose contact. I unplugged the sensor wires from the the controller today and then plugged them back in. This might have dislodged any insulating oxide that had formed (i.e. corrosion) that could affect this connection. Remember these are very low current, very low voltage circuits so even the slightest barrier to conduction could easily cause failure.

Reliability has always been a bit of a black art to me. To make a machine is a pretty straight forward business. There are numbers and laws for strength and pressure and power, so if you do your math right you can make a machine that will run. How long that machine will run is another matter.

According to one theory of business, reliability is a key feature for gaining sales. If the business leader subscribes to this theory, at least some money is going to be spent on investigating reliability. The longer a product is around, and the more popular it is, the more it will improve. It may take a while, but electro-mechanical devices have been around for 100 years now, and I think they could do better with electrical connections. I am a little aggravated by this, I had to take a cold shower this morning.

A few days ago I fired up the furnace for the first time this fall. It didn't turn on. It's not a big deal, we use the gas fireplace for most of our heating. We only use the furnace when it gets really cold. But if we're going to have a furnace, we should keep it in working order. We might really want it one of these days. The furnace has failed twice before. Both times I called a furnace guy to come take a look at it. Once the only problem was that the filter was clogged. Cost me $100. That was embarrassing. The other time the igniter had burned out. This time Osmany and I opened it, poked around and discovered that the controller was kaput. Specifically the relay the supplies current to the igniter had failed. If I could have found a relay with a 24 VDC coil and 10 Amp, 120 VAC rated contacts, we could have replaced it ourselves. But I looked on Mouser and Digikey and couldn't find one. Maybe I wasn't holding my mouth right.

I looked on the Internet for a 50A50-112 furnace controller, but didn't find anything. Found an outfit in Pennsylvania selling something similar, but when I called them the couldn't find anything that would work. So now I look for furnace parts in Portland and I find two. I think this tells you something about the reliability of furnaces right there. Everyone has a car and there are hundreds of repair shops in Portland. I think furnaces might be a tad more reliable than cars. Of course, furnaces are much simpler than cars.

I called Nor-Mon with my part number and he tells me to bring it in and he'll match it up. So today Osmany and I drive into Portland and visit with Norman at Nor-Mon. The man talked incessantly about everything under the sun, his family, vacations, furnace controllers, devices you strap on your shoes that let you walk on ice (they have little carbide studs, kind of like studded snow tires for your car), the hardware business. I had to drag Osmany away or we might still be there.

There used to be thousands of different furnace controllers. Imagine with a population of 330 million people, we probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of a 100 million furnaces. If a production run of furnaces had 10,000 units, and each production run had their own unique controller, you would need 10,000 different controllers to control all those furnaces. A lot of them were probably minor variations of previous models. Somebody wanted a new feature, or they wanted more or different connection points, or they just wanted it to look different. Anyway,  a few years ago, White-Rodgers saw all this madness and decided to do something about it. They figured out what difference were and made a controller that can be configured as any one of a hundred different models. Now they only need a hundred different controllers to ensure that they will have viable replacement on hand to cover the 10,000 different controllers that have been deployed all over the country. (All these numbers are just supposition on my part.)

Anyway, Norman looked in his file of index cards. He had hundreds, maybe even a thousand, all arranged in cardboard trays and taking up six feet of valuable counter space. He looked in his file and found a replacement that ought to work. It has the model number of my controller, along with about a hundred others, printed right there on the box.I bought it for $200, which included a 5% surcharge to cover whatever tariffs are going to be coming into effect as part of Trump's trade war with China.

Mistakes Were Made

You might think this is a knob, but it's not, it's a 'skirt'.

The main control knob on our Maytag clothes drier wasn't working properly. I assumed the timer that the knob controlled was the problem. Order the timer for $100 and replaced it only to find out that the problem was with the knob. What's the deal, Maytag? You can make a  conpiicated mechanical timer that will last indefinitely but you can't make a simple knob?

So I order a new knob, but it's not just one piece, it's two. Fine, order both pieces only to discover when they arrive that the knob is composed of three pieces, and the one piece that connects to the shaft, the one piece I really need isn't here. Who makes a knob out of three pieces, and why do you have to sell them separately? Why can't you put them together and sell them as one knob?

So I return the two pieces I don't need and order the third one that I do, but this business of the knob flopping around is getting to be a pain, so I stuff the backside full of wood putty and let it set. It's been working fine ever since. However, if it ever does fail I have a brand new knob and a fully functional timer waiting in the wings.

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Flip Cap Easy Clean & Change with STA-TITE Installation
Decided to replace a couple of toilet seats because they were getting kind of old and groady. Last time I did this I got plastic seats thinking they would last forever. They don't, so this time I figured I'd get good old wood seats. They're cheaper and they might be warmer. Get ready to mount the new seats and the screws won't fit in the holes. Write to the company and they point me to this video. Now I look at the instructions, and yes, maybe they do explain it, but the pictures are small and not that clear. But mostly their new fangled technique is just backwards from the way it has always been done. They should have big red flags all over the box warning you about this new pair of dimes.

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The water heater flaked out the very next day after I last fiddled with it. I was flashing a code of some sort again, but when I started mucking with it one of the wires that goes to another connector just fell off. I bought a set of crimp-on terminals at Lowes and crimped them on and we seem to be good.

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Old Bedframe

Older son's bedframe got bent during moving and this led to a kind of slow motion collapsing. Normally I would tackle a repair problem like this with hammer, tongs, some strips of wood or metal and a handful of screws. But being as he lives downtown and I'd already made one attempt at repair, I decided that the expedient thing would be to just order a new one. I could go down there and in short order we could break down the old one and put together the new one. Home made repairs, at least the way I do them, can go on for hours, and without actually seeing the frame I would have a hard time making a plan to repair it.

New Bedframe

I hauled the old frame home thinking I could give it away on Craigslist, but it turns out people see the picture in the Free listings and don't read the description. Only one person persisted when informed of the condition and we couldn't connect because of time distance conflicts. I was thinking fine, I would fix it my self and sell it on Craiglist for half of what it cost. At least I would recoup some of my money. But today we were cleaning the garage and I saw this pile of pieces lying there and I said screw it, and cut up the long rails with my antique saber saw and dumped them in the recycling.

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Our Panasonic vacuum cleaner started stinking the other day, a sure sign that the drive belts have reached their end. No problem, I have a spare set. The motor shaft is red hot (not literally), so I let it sit for ten minutes to cool before I attempt to install the new ones. Getting the new ones on is kind of a pain because it takes a goodly amount of force to get them to stretch enough to slide over the pulleys, enough force to drag the vacuum cleaner around. So one foot to brace against the machine to keep it from sliding which leaves both hands free to wrestle with the belt. I ordered a new pair from Sears for $10, but just now I noticed I have ordered these belts with from Amazon a couple of times, once in September of 2016 for $7 and again in  April of 2017

Wonderful Whirlpool

Last night approaching bedtime my wife informs me that there is no hot water. Well, now is a fine time to tell me Lucille. The water heater has a fancy electronic control box with a little blinky light and it's blinking out error code 6, which means the upper sensor is out of commission. A little Googling turns up this page, which suggests that the connector is weak. It's nothing special, just a small plastic connector for four wires. The contacts look like brass and since we are working with very low voltage a little bit of corrosion could be the culprit. I unplug it and replug it a couple of times but it doesn't help. Now I run into the new improved lighting protocol. You can't relight the pilot light until the thermopile has cooled off enough to stop producing electricity. You can ignite the pilot light but it will only stay lit as long as you hold down the button. Holding it longer, like two minutes instead of one, doesn't help. Let off the button and the flame goes out.

Maybe replugging the connector was not enough, so I use a small jewelers screw driver to push on the sides of the brass barrel connectors hoping to distort them enough that they will scrape the contact surface when I plug it in. I can't tell whether I have actually had any effect. I give the controller ten minutes to cool and try lighting it again. This time the pilot stays lit and the LED is blinking a nice steady 'one'. All is well. Turn the knob to on and whoosh, the burner lights off. Wake up this morning with a tank full of hot water. Mmmmm, hot water, my favorite.

This reminds me that 25 years ago we used to have a similar problem with Multibus-I computers. After they had been running for a while (a couple of years maybe?) they would just quit. The solution was to pull all the boards out and polish the edge connectors with a pencil eraser. I remember bringing at least one computer back to life this way. The thing is those edge connectors were gold plated but they still developed enough tarnish to impeded electrical contact. I haven't seen that kind of problem in years. Has connector technology improved? In any case it looks like not everyone has gotten the memo on how to deal with this.

Death to Whirlpool, Part 3

January 15, 2013

Whirlpool Customer Service
553 Benson Road
Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Dear Person,

I am unhappy with the Whirlpool Gas Water Heater I bought a couple of years ago. I bought it to replace the A.O. Smith brand gas water heater that was installed in the house when we had it built 15 years earlier.

The old water heater was conventional in all respects, it had no electronic controls of any kind. It may not have been the most efficient, but it was reliable. It never failed to supply hot water. Even when it was on its’ last legs, leaking water all over the garage floor, it was still providing hot water.

I cannot say the same for my new, fancy, Whirlpool water heater with the electronic controls. Two, maybe three years old, and the electronic controller gives up the ghost. Two weeks later the water heater  flames out again. This is disappointing, to say the least.

I chose this particular model because it seemed like a good compromise between expected life time (estimated from the warranty) and price. I did not like the fact that it had an electronic controller, but it seemed that all of the gas water heaters available at Lowes had some kind of electronic controller. Lowes and Whirlpool seemed like good brand names, so I took a chance.

As I see the situation, there are three distinct problems here:

1. Poor response to customer complaints.
2. Failure to follow up on controller failures.
3. Bad choice of connectors in implementing the design.

When I called the first time you were closed. When I called the second time I was on hold for a very long time. This tells me you were very busy, which means either that you are scrimping on customer service, or you are getting way more calls than you expected. As it was, my water heater failed on Friday and I did not get the replacement controller till Wednesday. A better response would have been “for $100 we can have that controller replaced before midnight”.

You sent me a new controller without asking for the old one back. This tells me that either

• you don’t care why it failed, or
• you have already examined enough failed controllers to know what the problem is, or
• this is such a rare occurrence that it is statistically insignificant.

I’m thinking you already know what the problem is. The question then becomes why haven’t you done anything about it?

When my water heater flamed out a second time, you sent me a replacement sensor. Since unplugging and reconnecting the sensor was all that was required to get it running this time, I suspect that the problem was a tiny bit of corrosion on the contacts. Plug in connectors are fine for quick assembly, but if you are going that route perhaps you should have taken a lesson from the computer industry and used gold plated connectors. If using gold causes you grief, perhaps you should use a more positive method of connecting the sensors to the controller, like screws.

To correct this problem with the connectors, I suggest you spend a little time and money on R & D and develop a replacement connector that will not suffer from loss of contact due to corrosion.

The sensor replacement kit you sent me contains two instant connectors. I did not install it because it looks to me like installing it would simply introduce four new points of possible failure (two wires contacting a clip in each of two connectors).

Sincerely,

Charles Pergiel

Whirpool Gas Water Heater particulars:
Model Number: SG1J5040T3NOV
Previous posts on this subject here and here.

Death to Whirlpool, Part 2

Water Heater Controller

For the second time in two days my older son has fixed broken appliances just by looking at them. Glory Be His Name! The new controller for the water heater was supposed to arrive yesterday. I spent all day waiting for it so naturally it didn't show. I finally gave up and decided to tackle the screaming fireplace fan. It shouldn't be too difficult, just a matter of pulling it out, cleaning it up, oiling the bearings, and stuffing it back in its hole. Get it out and spin the fan and there's no squeak. Okay, maybe it only happens when it's hot and when it's running full speed. Pull the motor loose and give it a spin by turning the nylon coupler on the end of the shaft. Squeak! Aha! Found the culprit. Pull the little nylon do-jobbie off the end of the shaft and examine it. The shaft has a half flat on the end that matches a half-flat hole in the nylon coupler. There is no way that thing could slip. We fool with it and fool with it and we aren't getting anywhere until older son finally notices that when he spins the shaft directly, that is, without the nylon coupler on the end, the motor still squeaks.What the deuce? The armature in the motor is not turning! Double aha! Take the motor apart and the shaft slides right out the armature.
    Wait a minute, haven't I been hear before? Yes I have. I have epoxy on hand, so I mix up a little dab, slather it on the shaft, slide the shaft back into the armature, and drive the tip of a toothpick into the little hole I made last time I was here. I thought about about cutting a piece of paper clip, but my fuse was a little short. The epoxy alone worked for six years. Maybe the toothpick will extend that a bit. I fired up the fan this morning and so far it is spinning happily, i.e. quietly.
    This morning the new controller for the water heater arrived and I set about installing it. I have a little trouble locating the necessary tools, but other than that everything went fine. (I still haven't found the big wrench I was using yesterday on the fireplace. Where could it have gone? Gremlins, I tell you!) Anyway, got the old one out, got the new one in and got it all hooked up, and now all we have to do it press the GO buttom. I press the go button and nothing happens. I take a break and come back a little later and try again. Still no go. Stomp off. When I got this heater two or three years ago, I had a little trouble lighting it. I called Whirlpool and the very nice lady told me the secret which was that you had to hold down one of the buttons for a longish time in order to get the gizmo to fire up, but that was years ago. Which button was it? Maybe Whirlpool can tell me. Call Whirlpool. They want my serial number, which is okay I guess, but then they want to verify my name and address. What? Why? I hang up, I've had enough of this phone call protocol. A little while later older son stops by to see how I'm doing. We go out to the garage and I am about to give him a rundown on the action so far when I notice the little blinky light on the controller is blinking! Hallelujah! It is working! I turn the knob to ON and we hear the wonderful roar of the main burner lighting off. So older son fixed it just by showing up. Weird thing is that I could not see the pilot light through the little window. I could turn the main burner off and check again, but after five days without hot water I am loath to touch that dial.

This 50 gallon water heater heater is rated at 40,000 BTU's (British Thermal Units). One BTU can heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. "A pint's a pound the world around", so 50 gallons weighs 400 pounds. We want to raise temperature 100 degrees, from 50 to 150. 100 degrees times 400 pounds is 40,000 BTU's. Okay, this all kind of fits together, but how long is it going to take to heat that 50 gallons? Hmmm. BTU doesn't tell you that, but eHow does:

Significance

• A water heater is ranked by BTU input, but really means BTUs/hr; thus a 33,000 BTU heater can heat 33,000 pounds of water by one degree in an hour; or, 330 pounds by 100 degrees.

Update: Two hot showers in two days! Paradise, I tell you. I went back to look at the pilot light after it finished heating its first tank of hot water (took an hour and a half). Being as it is a new fangled, electronically controlled gizmo, you can't see into the burner area directly. There's a little window you can peer through. When the burner was on I could see the flame easily, but now the main burner is off. Only the pilot light should be on. I look in the window and I see nothing. What the devil? I look a little closer, I look to the right, and then I look to the left, and aha! There's the little devil. Confounded designers, they need to have their hands slapped.

Update July 2019 replaced image that disappeared when Blogger 'fixed' some bad html.

Death To Whirlpool

I just found out that our water heater has flamed out. Three years old, maybe, and the electronic box has flaked out. It is just after 7PM West Coast time and all the little Whirlpool people have gone home for the day. This would be the time to call my local plumber, but I expect an emergency call on Friday night would cost as much as new heater. My old mechanical, inefficient, el-cheapo water heater didn't give me any trouble for fifteen years, until it sprung a leak, and even then it was still delivering hot water. The car people seem to have figured out how to make electronics reliable. How much longer before the water people figure it out?

Stupid Water Heater

Yesterday at 5:30PM I drove to Lowe's and bought a new 50 gallon water heater for $600. Yesterday was New Year's Eve. They closed at 6. I managed to find someone to help me get it off the shelf (6 feet in the air) and onto the cart, but loading it into the truck I was on my own.

I have been fighting this thing for like two weeks thinking that it is just a bad valve or a bad joint and I can fix it and I won't have to shell out the money for a new one. But now it's New Year's Eve, the leak is worse than ever, Mom goes back to work Monday and she wants a new water heater. So, by her command, I went and bought the monster.

It started with the safety valve leaking. Why should the safety valve start leaking? Is it really getting too hot? The pressure shouldn't be getting too high. I mean the water mains pressure is only so much, if the hot water is getting hot enough to increase the pressure, it should just push back on the mains. There aren't any check valves, at least I don't think so. The water heater is fifteen years old, so maybe corrosion has caused it to start leaking. I buy a new one. But replacing it means shutting the supply valve. I shut the valve once, and open it once and all is well, but for some reason I need to close it again, and that was the second step on the road to my doom. It wouldn't open. It is a little brass gate valve and it is stripped. The handle goes around and around but it does nothing. The valve stays shut.

Now I need a new valve. Pulling the old valve means turning off the main water supply, which means a trip into the crawl space. The valve is 15 feet from the entrance. One trip in and back to turn it off. Another trip in and back to turn it back on. I have made this trip so many times now I could do it in my sleep.

The old valve is soldered on, so I need a torch to pull it off. I have a propane torch, but after a couple minutes with it I realize it's going to be an all day project to get this joint hot enough to take apart. Time for MAPP gas. Fortunately, I have a MAPP gas torch as well. Unfortunately, it is as old as MAPP gas and all I can get out of it is a small yellow flame. To Home Depot we go get a new torch, a bottle of gas, a new valve and a couple of fittings. Back home, I pull off the old valve, solder on a threaded fitting for the new valve, and thread the new valve on. Pull on the wrench to tighten it up and the newly soldered joint breaks loose. Bah! That's what happens when you get in a hurry and don't prep your surfaces well. At least I think that's what happened. Resolder and reinstall valve. This time it holds.

So now I have a new shut off valve and a new safety valve, but the leak is worse than ever. I dink with it now and again, but I have other work to do, so I put it off to the weekend. New Years is coming, the stores will be closed, time to bite the bullet. So today I put in the new water heater. Not too many problems. You should put the stub pipes in the top before you put the heater in position, no clearance for a pipe wrench afterwards.

Got it all hooked up and ready to go. Push the go button and ... nothing. It's got a fancy electronic gas valve. Push the button, push the ignitor, nothing. What gives? Read the instructions, try again. Still nothing. Finally call the hotline. Hold the button down for a minute, and now it works. Duh! I just realized it's just like the old mechanical valve, except you can't tell if the pilot light is lit! I am suddenly afflicted with the urge to strangle the buzzword injecting moron who came up with this gizmo.

Still have to resolder the joint again, it's still leaking but only a very little bit. I am out of flux, so I will have to go buy a new bottle tomorrow. Also need to exchange the torch: the built in ignitor doesn't. For $35 it durn well should. But we have hot water and the garage floor is dry. Still have to figure out how to get rid of the old one. I want to find out where the leak was, but that will take some work, and I don't know if I will have the energy.

Old Water Heater

Update July 2019 replace Picasa slideshow with photo and link to Google Photos album.