Piping a heater bypass

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igneous

igneous

0
Jun 25, 2017
116
DFW, TX
Well, the max e therm 333 heater may be done. It's not firing up and I'm afraid the combustion chamber is under water, I'll know this weekend when I remove bolt from manifold.
Looks like a new one is in my future, but my question is.....has anyone piped a bypass to be able to valve off the heater? Another option is just getting a couple of fittings that will
screw on where the heater inlet/outlet connect. I'd like to be able to make some fittings to go onto the heater water connections where I can hook up a water hose and pump/bucket
system and flush the tubing with acid/water solution to keep it from scaling.
Other question is, can I get the 400 BTU unit instead of 333?
 

Heater Bypass - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com

Whether you can increase the heater from 333 to 400 is mostly a function of if you have sufficient gas supply for the extra ~70k btu's. What size gas line currently serves the heater, how far is the run from the meter and is in natural gas or propane?
 
igneous said:
Looks like a 1.25 or 1.5" line
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Do you know the distance from meter to heater? Propane or Natural gas
igneous said:
Pentair won't warranty it unless a certified install company puts it in
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Pentair's definition is pretty liberal here. I've heard some self install and have a pool guy "sign off" on the install providing an Invoice
 
It's Natural and prolly 120' from meter. Should be simple install if gas valve is preset. I'm looking into getting a ETI400, but don't want to
pay 3X normal price. Need to do another thread to see if anyone has bought one and how it performs.
 
Ouch that's an 8000 heater! The apparent difference between it and a mastertemp is 96% efficiency vs 84%. Maybe I'm missing something else but my math says for every $1 in energy use the eti400 would save 12 cents over the mastertemp. To justify that you would need to spend 25k in gas costs 😳
Almost seems like adding both an mt400 and a heatpump would cost the same and have higher overall energy savings
 
Ahultin said:
Almost seems like adding both an mt400 and a heatpump would cost the same and have higher overall energy savings
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I think we'd all choose to have both the gas heater and heat pump if we could afford to if $ and equipment pad space don't come into play so much. I just installed a bypass for my heater; it was on a new build, not a retrofit though.
both GIF
 

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Pentair ETI 400 is ~ $9k while the 250 btu unit is $6k, which isn’t bad cause it has identical pipe placing as the max e therms.
These are the new ones with titanium heat exchangers.
I pulled bottom manifold bolt and water poured out for 10 min., then it fired up and quickly went out when water flooded combustion chamber. Anyone got a good max e therm heat exchanger for sale?
Thanks for the chart Ahultin, good reference info.
 
If you are going to go new, it might be worthwhile to check with your gas company if 2psi service is available. If so, they could change out the regulator before the meter , add a regulator going into the house then add a regulator at the heater. At 2psi the 1.25 line would be more than adequate to service the larger heater.
 
This is my pad now so I need to know best option (placement) for 3 way valve and bypass pipe. I’m thinking right above pump outlet and run to a T in the vertical pipe coming up to SWG. Then put check valve or ball valve on bottom left line coming out of heater. The line running out of filter into heater can move up and down but I don’t want it to block pump control pad. The space to the left of pump is where the old booster pump sat….best thing I’ve got recently is the robot cleaner.

93EFB050-65B9-4C06-A989-54A0733C7428.jpeg
 
igneous said:
This is my pad now so I need to know best option (placement) for 3 way valve and bypass pipe. I’m thinking right above pump outlet and run to a T in the vertical pipe coming up to SWG. Then put check valve or ball valve on bottom left line coming out of heater. The line running out of filter into heater can move up and down but I don’t want it to block pump control pad. The space to the left of pump is where the old booster pump sat….best thing I’ve got recently is the robot cleaner.

View attachment 499256
Click to expand...
Sounds like a good plan! Little hard to tell how neatly everything will fit from that picture angle but looks like it could/should work.

Not sure if you can get the angles to work but you might be able to just put the 3 way where that 90 is next to the vertical pipe going up to SWG and do the same as planned with check valve.
 
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