Pool/spa heater headache!

[Jnkies]

Hi! New to this site and forum, hoping you guys can help. We bought our house in November, under the condition that the previous homeowner would fix the broken spa heater. He had a company replace something, and when we checked, it would turn on and start to heat, so we thought we were good. Once we moved in, we found it would heat to 70, then shut off. Several small fixes later, we called the warranty company who suggested we replace it. Got a few estimates to replace the old 250k with a 400k BTU, chose a company, they installed it, then couldn't get the gas to work (it comes on at the heater, something about prerrr. Just had some plumbers come out and they said that we'd need to replace and upgrade the entire gas line and add some regulators because the 3/4" pipe we have from the meter won't run the 400k BTU and we apparently at least part of the line is PVC (yes, PVC for the gas line!). Quote is $7500.

Does this seem right? Should we just replace the PVC pipe, then install a smaller heater (250k btu) or can we get this setup to work with new AND bigger pipes?

Thanks for all your help!

Pool Specs!
New machine is a Heywood. 19k gallon kidney shaped pool with spa.

 

[Patrick_B]

Hey, welcome to the TFP!

Sorry this has been unanswered, but maybe a bump up will get you an answer. Hope you enjoy the forum!

 

[pooldv]

People often have to upgrade their gas service to supply the larger heater. Some need bigger gas lines or regulators and others even need to have their meter upgraded. Upgrading gas service is not cheap and is definitely not something to cut corners on. I would get three bids for what you are trying to get done. Some folks do just stay with the smaller heater rather than upgrading their gas service.