My actual question is in the last paragraph but I wanted to provide some history first.
My direct vent gas water heater went thursday. I was surprised to learn that replacement was about $1600. I remember replacing an electric water heater in my last house 11 years ago was about $400. Any savings in fuel is most likely wiped out by installation costs for gas.
Worse yet, no one sells a direct vent gas water heater with anything more than a 6 year warranty. So that means every 6 to 10 years I can expect another $1600 bill (ignoring inflation).
So I decided to waste even more money. I went with a Rinnai tankless water heater. Guaranteed 12 years and supposedly should last 20 years. Only $3200 and it will be much more efficient.
Well I discovered that the inefficient tank water heater was keeping the unfinished part of my basement nice and cozy warm during the winter. It was also warming up the cold water source in the house. Now the unfinished part of the basement is freezing and so is the cold water in the house. I suppose I will be better off in the hot summer without the tank.
Of course there are other disadvantages to the tankless system. Water takes longer to reach each faucet. And you are limited to three uses at a time
So overall I would not recommend a tankless system so far in my short experience.
Now here is my question. The installer (our local gas utility) did a sloppy job with the outside vent. They promise to fix it Monday (the cancellation rights are good to Tuesday so theoretically I could make them rip the whole system out if I get ticked off enuf by them.) Difficult to explain but it involves a giant ring of 1 inch wide caulk instead of getting the right size sleave. So now I am suspicious of their plumbing work. My house is PVC. It is tan for hot so I assume that is CPVC. All the joints are plastic. The gas company used white pipe with copper elbows which fit into the white pipe and there are some rings around the ends of the white pipe to secure the elbows. I am wondering what type of piping they used and whether the flowrate is reduced by the internal elbows (my cpvc uses external elbows and the pipe acts as the male portion of the joints). ALso none of their pipes are fastened to anything to secure them. The flowrate for even a single faucet using hot water seems down compared to before the installation.
Thanks for your help.