hot water, finally

I’m very happy to say that my house, like so many rich and famous people’s, now has hot water flowing right through the pipes. It comes right out of the faucets and even the shower head. I feel so priviledged. At last I can take showers in my own home. I intend to take my first here in over a year tonight.

I had, when I first got my new fancy smancy tankless water heater in, hooked it up to 240VAC instead of the 120 it requires. This, I determined, burned out the main transformer. I had finally ordered that. When I put it in, I finally had power going to the GFCI and then the controller board. However, when I tried to run it, all it did was blink a small light on the circuit board. This was an error code, telling me there was one of three possible problems. One was the circuit board; I feared I might have burned something out on it, though it all looked fine. Another problem, wrong gas type, was not the problem for sure. The third option was a problem with the solenoid valve. Testing this required jumping past a fuse, and I was leery of doing this myself, so the heater sat for months. Finally, today I had my dad come over to help me look at it. We did they bypassing of the fuse test, and determined that was fine. We then had no more help from the troubleshooting guide, and had to start figuring things out ourselves. We tested the continuity and voltage going to the two solenoid valves, a hi-limit switch, and many other parts. After over two hours of this, we were getting ready to stop for the day. My dad, looking at a diagram of it, wondered if removing the plate the GFCI was attached to would give us a better view of the solenoids and other stuff. I took it off and immediately noticed that the wires going to another gas valve, the VGO, were disconnected. We plugged them in, ran the heater, and instantly it was working. It was quite exciting.

The amount of force needed to attach the wires’ clip was enough that it couldn’t have been knocked off while I was messing with the GFCI before. It must have been either put on loosely and not clipped in all the way or not put in at all by the manufacturers. It’s crazy that I’ve had to go all these months without hot water and showers at home because of such an amazingly simple problem.

wahoo, hot water.