Early leak issue with RayPak406A Heater, need advice, and maybe some help

[ramsfan]

Hello all, the fine pool owners on this forum helped me select the Raypak 406K pool heater, which seemed like a great fit for me. Here is a link to that post. New RayPak 406k installed today, tips on how to make it last and work properly?

I had it installed by a professional pool company on August 9th, 2017. I noticed water dripping from the inside of the heater yesterday, and I called the pool company. They came out and said the heat exchanger is leaking, and RayPak says my pool chemicals are to blame, and the will provide a replacement exchanger, but not cover labor. I keep my FC between 4 and 6, sometimes it goes a bit above or below this, and I adjust, pH between 7.2 and 7.8, and my salt is currently 2900ppm. Raypak stated that one or more of these chemicals is the cause of the heat exchanger leaking.

This lead me to do a bit of research on leaking RayPak heat exchangers, and I was dismayed at what I found here: New RayPak 406k installed today, tips on how to make it last and work properly?.

This heater has only been installed since August 9th 2017 and I am not very concerned about the poor quality of the heat exchanger. I think this company knows they have a defective product, and I am even more concerned about how they are choosing the address it (blame the customer).

My question/advice is this.

I do not want to have to replace a defective heat exchanger outside of warranty, EVER. They are expensive, and should last longer than my experience, and the experience that others have posted about here: Top 10 Reviews of Raypak. My fear is even if they replace the exchanger, that based on other customer's experience, it will fail again, possibly outside of warranty, so I leaning towards sending this thing back and getting a different heater, from a different manufacturer.

How would you handle if you were in my situation?

Thank you!

 

[borjis]

It almost sounds like a defective weld or something....as in the heat exchanger was bound to fail early.

Seems a bit odd they won't cover labor, but at least they are covering the exchanger. those are so expensive.

I'd probably just bite the bullet and pay the labor if this is something you can't do yourself.

Not cool of RayPak, but this is pretty rare occurrence based on everyone else here who has one.

 

[setsailsoon]

Ram,

What a pi***r! Can you give me a little more information on the heater? I'm curious if the tubes were copper or cupro nickel. Also is the leak in the tubing or the header? If you can send it back at this point and get your money that would be great and that would be my first choice. If not, then I'd take the free exchanger and install it myself or get a pool company to do it for you. If you have a copper maybe you can get them to upgrade the metalurgy. FYI the cupro nickel is about twice the cost of the copper. But copper should work I would think your problem was very likely a bad weld or over-stressed bend. I don't know that much about pool heaters but I have installed a few and it seems Raypak has a superb reputation by many experts. For salt water installations I've put a LOT of heat exchangers in service offshore on oil and gas platforms. The metallurgy of choice for this is always cupro-nickel.

I hope this helps.

Chris

 

[ps0303]

I personally install over 200 of these Raypak/Rheem units each year. Unless the units are damaged by bad pool chemistry, I have no complaints with these units. In fact, I install so many of them because they are a solid unit over their competitors.

The first link in your post doesn't show any issues with the unit. In fact it is just common sense info for ALL heaters and not exclusive to Raypak. Maybe you meant to post some other link.

I would love to see pictures of where the leak is and then when you replace the heat exchanger, I would like to see the ends of the heat exchanger where the tubes connect to the metal plate on each end.

I assure you, this is a solid product and like I said, I install 200+ of this brand each year and do not see the issues you might be having.

 

[ramsfan]

Thank you all for the input and information! Much appreciated!

This is interesting, from what I gather, the RayPak 406A comes standard with a copper exchanger, and the CuproNickel is an upgrade.

I work VERY hard to keep all my chemicals in line, but life happens, and also there are certain situations that require exceptions. For example, even though I target 4-6 FC, I am not too worried if it creeps a bit, and I also raise it higher when dealing with any issues, like say black algae or any need to shock.

I didn't even know that CuproNickel was an option (thank you!!!!), and from some limited research, it sounds like that is a NO BRAINER for salt water pool.

Still open to dialogue and advice, please let me know if I can dig up any more information. I honestly don't know for sure what exchanger I is in the unit I have.

 

[setsailsoon]

Ram,

If you get the actual model number off the information plate you can tell. Or you may have to get the model number from the exchanger itself. Here's the tough part on the "warranty" from what I can discern and it appears to me that all brands have this problem. They'll recommend a range of chemistry that is what most people strive for most of the time. But every single pool either accidentally or intentionally goes beyond this for transient events like when they have an algae bloom etc. So technically every pool goes beyond the recommended range. I'm sure there are quite a few that stay out of the range and do cause damage to their heaters because of this. The only way to prove conclusively that the damage is caused by improper chemistry is to have a qualified metallurgist inspect the failure. They can conclusively determine this very easily. It really irks me when they "determine" this by edict sight unseen. They may think this but they don't know sight unseen. So the burden is on you. You can have an examination by a qualified lab (qualified welding inspection companies are in every major city). The problem is this can cost $500-$1000 and even then all you have is a report. And to make it worse the exchanger you have is worth the same amount. So it's a hard battle to win even if you're completely right and it never pays off.

The truth is that minor excursions for short periods of time especially when the heater is not in use wont damage it. But there are probably way more owners that don't know much about their pools and have no idea what their pool water chemistry is or has been. These people could very well be the ones that do cause premature failures. pH excursions with high chlorine levels at tube metal temps in heaters do very often cause failure. There are several well-understood mechanisms for this.

So I don't know if this is helpful. But maybe it explains manufacturers "rush to judgement" even if many of us don't like it.

Chris

 

[ps0303]

Thank you all for the input and information! Much appreciated!

This is interesting, from what I gather, the RayPak 406A comes standard with a copper exchanger, and the CuproNickel is an upgrade.

I work VERY hard to keep all my chemicals in line, but life happens, and also there are certain situations that require exceptions. For example, even though I target 4-6 FC, I am not too worried if it creeps a bit, and I also raise it higher when dealing with any issues, like say black algae or any need to shock.

I didn't even know that CuproNickel was an option (thank you!!!!), and from some limited research, it sounds like that is a NO BRAINER for salt water pool.

Still open to dialogue and advice, please let me know if I can dig up any more information. I honestly don't know for sure what exchanger I is in the unit I have.

There is a HUGE misconception of cupro-nickel. First, just because you have a salt chlorinated pool, you do NOT have to get a cupro-nickel heat exchanger. The amount of salt in such a pool is not any amount that will cause issues. Unless you specifically requested a cupro-nickel unit, you have a copper heat exchanger. Second, Cupro-nickel will fail just like copper but it takes a little longer is all. It is not some magic bullet that makes the unit indestructible.

Please post pictures of the leak and I would also like to see the old heat exchanger as well.

Also, there is no "welding" per say on the heat exchangers where the sheet tubes are inserted into the metal plate(s). It's a high compression fit.

 

[setsailsoon]

There is a HUGE misconception of cupro-nickel. First, just because you have a salt chlorinated pool, you do NOT have to get a cupro-nickel heat exchanger. The amount of salt in such a pool is not any amount that will cause issues. Unless you specifically requested a cupro-nickdel unit, you have a copper heat exchanger. Second, Cupro-nickel will fail just like copper but it takes a little longer is all. It is not some magic bullet that makes the unit indestructible.

Please post pictures of the leak and I would also like to see the old heat exchanger as well.

Also, there is no "welding" per say on the heat exchangers where the sheet tubes are inserted into the metal plate(s). It's a high compression fit.

Paul,

I certainly agree with your magic bullet comment, and I didn't realize pool heater tubes are not welded but a rolled tube has many of the same problems as a weld from a corrosion perspective because there are points of stress in joints from the rolling tool instead of the weld. I'm not sure cupro-nickel really is that much better for pools though since small amounts of other pollutants like ammonia and sulfur compounds can eliminate the cupro nickel advantages even for the 70/30 alloys like C71500. But I guess my main points are this:

• Metal failures do happen and I'm certain some failures are due to manufacturing errors that should be fully warranted.
• The problem is that there are almost certainly many, many more failures due to improper pool care.
• Sadly, I don't see a good way to warrant the ones that should be warranted without causing the heater company to go out of business due to covering the many tubes that fail due to the pool owner's fault.

I hope this is clearer.

Chris

 

[ps0303]

The Hayward FD units are known for heat exchanger failures not due to chemicals. I have seen them time after time and what I see is that it fails just at the very end of the sheet tube before it goes into the plate. Several techs and I have suspected that there is an issue in the extrusion process where at that point of failure it is heated for too long or something similar to cause the copper to be weaker at that point. On all of the Hayward's that had leaks, it is always at the same spot. Some folks have said it because Hayward changed their design and uses a few tubes less in the newer units thus causing a issues with more water being pushed thru fewer tubes thus creating the failure due to erosion. However, I have compared a heat exchanger from a ED2 vs a FD and they have the same number of inlets and return tubes so that can not be the issue. The failure is always at the same point in the sheet tubes.

Hayward never wanted to warranty the heat exchangers and told consumers it was a chemistry issue. While I'm sure there are a fair number of pool owners that don't maintain their pools chemistry correctly, I personally know of about a half dozen people that are meticulous on their chemicals and had failures with a Hayward. Oddly enough, when the units were replaced with a Rheem/Raypak, the units are still working in place today with no issues.

Here is a thread I started back in 2014 that shows a good Raypak/Rheem heat exchanger vs one that was damaged due to chemicals.
Maintain your chemicals correctly

Here is a video on my Youtube channel.
Gas Pool Heater Heat Exchanger - YouTube

 

[setsailsoon]

Paul,

Great video and thanks! I also watched the next one where he repaired a Hayward heat exchanger. Tubes definitely appear to be rolled in. We use rolled in tube sheets a lot in industrial heat exchangers due to cost and sometimes spacing prevents welding. Interesting was the pin-hole that he described as external... looked a lot like it could have been an internal pit to me and that's almost always a local corrosion issue due to water chemistry when they fail offshore. But I'm no expert in this stuff I just heard all the time our metallurgists whining about how the operators don't add the right amount of corrosion inhibitors... Sort of makes me more sympathetic about the pool heater manufacturers.

Thanks for sharing this

Chris

 

[gmoberto]

at least they offered the part. i had a new 406L installed in DEC 2020, by Nov 2021 it was leaking! this is the nickel plated, blah, blah, they talked me into, plus install, i was told 5 year warranty..they came out and blamed chemicals and told me for another 2800$ they will replace the part..actually, they told me someone from Leslies pool, or Raypak would call, no one ever did..a 'POUND SAND customer service. i am fuming..they never told me what chemical was even the culprit. i thought i was very diligent with my water and tested 2times a week with a blue home kit. my water was always clear, clean and inviting. friends, family, and myself were in the pool often, no one ever had a skin issue..if it can eat thru copper it should leave a rash, i would think. never did the installer say or warning label say "watch this chemical or void warranty" now after research have i seen that this is a big problem..should have bout the pentair..