New water heater and central A/C replacement

[Duane N]

My natural gas hot water heater was close to 20 years old and still running strong but I decided to be pro-active and replace it before something happened.  It was a good thing because there was a pin hole leak on the back side of the heater and a few drops of water in the catch pan.  I replaced it the day before Thanksgiving and had to be creative getting the new one into my attic and the old one out of the attic.  A couple of come-a-longs and some rope did the trick.

   

   

I have pretty much re-modeled my entire home and beefed up the framing under the water heater before moving it into the attic.  The old one was behind an accordian door with a toilet in front of it.
   The overflow drain line from the water heater pan was run out the soffit using 1 1/4" PVC....it wasn't done at the time I took the picture of the new one installed.


While I'm at it I'm updating my HVAC system which is also close to 20 years old.  It's a Trane 3 1/2 ton 14 seer dual fuel heat pump system (heat pump runs until it reaches 35 degrees then it switches over the natural gas rather than electric heat) and the only thing that has gone wrong with it is a Capacitor for the compressor. 

The new gas furnace is 95% high efficiency furnace and the heat pump system is 14 seer.  For anyone interested the entire system cost me $2,335 including tax.  It's a Concord system which is basically a Lenox and has a 10 year warranty.  I'm not a fan of Lenox but a Trane system (American Standard) was nearly $1,500 more.  I'm also replacing the R5.6 duct insulation (mechanical code at the time I installed the duct system) with R8 insulation because the vapor barrier broke down sitting in a hot attic close to 20 years.

   

It's nice not having to hire a contractor to do stuff like this.  The water heater passed inspection and I doubt the inspector will even go in the attic to inspect the new HVAC system once he realized I was the home owner.  He smiled when he pulled in my drive way to inspect the water heater because I've been dealing with him for close to 20 years doing commercial HVAC.  He knows I won't cut corners on my own home but I may ask him to try to find something wrong with my install.

[daddo]

It's always puzzled me why, to save a few square feet in a home, the architects see that the appliances most important to us are shoved in a hot and cold and humid attic or tucked away in tiny spaces unworkable? In many cases they are hard to access for repairs and time/labor extensive to replace. I've seen more than one tpi valve open and destroy the home while the people were away as well as HVAC drains. Hard piping the tpi to the outside may have saved them, but the code said it was ok to allow it to drain into a little 2" tall pan with a small 3/4" gravity pipe for a drain. Some aren't even drained, but have a sensor no one will hear.
 All that would be needed would be a 6' x 7' mechanical room with a drain in the floor to house the water heater, the HVAC system, the electrical panel, and the main water shutoff for the house- even alarm systems and soft water units.  Instead, we want to save space by having 200 sg ft bathrooms, and kitchens too large to be practical or functional- Yet there are NO sizeable yards for kids to grow up playing in.
 Don't even get me started on so called energy efficient homes with Black roofs with a skimpy ridge vent.  

[Duane N]

It's always puzzled me why, to save a few square feet in a home, the architects see that the appliances most important to us are shoved in a hot and cold and humid attic or tucked away in tiny spaces unworkable? In many cases they are hard to access for repairs and time/labor extensive to replace. I've seen more than one tpi valve open and destroy the home while the people were away as well as HVAC drains. Hard piping the tpi to the outside may have saved them, but the code said it was ok to allow it to drain into a little 2" tall pan with a small 3/4" gravity pipe for a drain. Some aren't even drained, but have a sensor no one will hear.
 All that would be needed would be a 6' x 7' mechanical room with a drain in the floor to house the water heater, the HVAC system, the electrical panel, and the main water shutoff for the house- even alarm systems and soft water units.  Instead, we want to save space by having 200 sg ft bathrooms, and kitchens too large to be practical or functional- Yet there are NO sizeable yards for kids to grow up playing in.
 Don't even get me started on so called energy efficient homes with Black roofs with a skimpy ridge vent.  

The room the water is above is actually an attached garage but it was converted to an apartment back in the 80's.  It had it's own entrance and full sized bath.  It also had pink carpet and pink paneling.


It was the first room I gutted floor to ceiling.  Re-insulated the walls, new wiring, bay window where the garage door used to be and got rid of the shower and just made it a half bath.  If the water heater goes it's going to flood a garage because the main house floors are 20" above the floor of the garage.  The relief line is going to be piped outside.  I do agree with you about the relief line....if it blows you have 40-50 psi hot water spewing everywhere and the catch pan isn't going to contain that volume of water.

[daddo]

Pink. 

 One of the rooms in this house when we bought it had pink walls, throw rug, ceiling and trim. It was as if a giant pepto bismol bottle exploded.

[Snipe Hunter]

Concord is made by Lennox. The Concord is the same as Lennox's AireFlo line.

[Duane N]

Pink. 

 One of the rooms in this house when we bought it had pink walls, throw rug, ceiling and trim. It was as if a giant pepto bismol bottle exploded.

That's exactly what the garage reminded me of....haha.   The living room had blue paneling and trim.  One bathroom had purple tile and the master bath had pink tile.  One of the closets still had shag carpet in it.


My real estate agent kept trying to talk me out of buying this house but it's what I wanted...3/4 acre lot, woods around me, space between the houses, copper water piping, on a crawl space and a drive way up the side of the house.  I got it as a fixer upper dirt cheap and it's tripled in value since I bought it in 1998.

[Duane N]

Concord is made by Lennox. The Concord is the same as Lennox's AireFlo line.

Thanks for the info...it came with two different badges you could slap on the condenser...one was Concord and I can't remember the other.

[Snipe Hunter]

Thanks for the info...it came with two different badges you could slap on the condenser...one was Concord and I can't remember the other.

That system is generally sold to HVAC suppliers and rebadged by the supplier as their "house brand". That doesn't mean it's good. It's just a distribution channel.
The other badge was probably the name of the distributor or the name the distributor gave it.