Bosch Natural Gas Tankless Water Heater Aquastar 250SX

Bosch Natural Gas Tankless Water Heater Aquastar 250SX

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kopperhed
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Bosch 250SX tankless water heater .. DON'T DO IT!

Written: Feb 14 '07
Pros:WHEN it works,the best shower ever, I'm sold on the "concept" of tankless heaters.
Cons:poor design.when it acts up, you get NOTHING! it doesn't "sort of" work.
The Bottom Line: skip the Bosch. poor design. parts not available locally. apparently the most finicky water heater ever built.

to start off, I was sold on this by my brother in Houston (this will play a big factor in a minute) who had one installed and worked trouble-free for 6mos. or more, he loved it. I was amazed at the compact size for a "whole-house" heater and thought this would be good way to free up floor space in my tiny garage plus allow wife & kids to take consequent showers in the AM without waiting for a tank to "replenish" (replaced a 38 gal. electric). So the unit was $995 at Lowe's, and I thought I could hang it on the wall above existing water tank & route everything to it myself. BOY WAS I WRONG!!!!!!! Lowe's doesn't even sell a 3/4" flex gas line, guy said I'd probably need a "dedicated" 3/4" supply from service entrance. Call plumbers for a $300-400 dollar gas line job, figure I'll hook up the rest myself. BOY WAS I WRONG!!!!! The installation will have to be inspected, so they "had" to do the whole install to make sure it would pass. $1000 later...... we had hot water..... for a few weeks, then kept getting error codes (which all mean basically the same thing, no hot water), clear the code, turn it off & on 3 or 4 times.... hey, we got hot water again....for another week or 2. AND THEN...... it wouldn't "clear".... call plumbers that hooked it up, they said it was getting water & gas to the unit, not their problem, they didn't sell the unit ( they do sell & install another brand). Look up the only guy within 150 miles of Tulsa, OK authorized to work on this thing..... will drop by in 2 days. Water got into the unit somehow (freakish updraft into vent pipe during sleet storm?) and shorted out gas valve... 3 days for part, $500. And maybe the condensation drain hose wasn't hanging down like it should have, so it is now. Great, hot water again after 5 days without........ for about another month. I take off cover and remove plate from gas valve where wife said Bosch repairman did last time...... water in valve again, blow it out with air compressor, works this time. Call Bosch guy back out, 4 days later, he opens it up, more water in gas valve. He checks flue pipe and drain, says everything looks ok, discusses with Bosch, they decide we have freakish roof pitch (it's not flat, it's not steep, it's average) and need 2 90 deg. elbows on vent so it points straight down, and a new gas valve. Bosch pays for gas valve, we pay $100 for elbows. Hot water again, for 2 weeks..... 3-4 resets seems to get it going intermittently. Call Bosch guy & plumbers back out. Bosch guy comes 1 day, says no water in valve this time, does some gas/CO level tweaking. Plumber comes out next day, I explain about water getting in unit. He finally decides to look at unit, takes cover off, notices intake is up top where it pulls 20-30 deg. air from my attic, down around heat exchanger into intake funnel area, says it's probably condensating from the heat exchanger, which would drip off directly into gas valve intake area ( makes sense). Tells me it's a s****y design, the units he sells & installs draw air thru the front directly into valve area, and most of his installations are in garages similar to mine and rarely has any trouble with them. Says he's going to call Bosch and talk to them about the intake design and possibly pull intake stack off and just draw air from garage area. Waiting to hear back on that. I don't personally know anyone else in this area using ANY brand of tankless heater, thinking about asking plumber if I could visit one of his other customers and see how theirs is working. If the plumber and Bosch can't work it out, I'm taking the piece of crap out and getting a 50 gallon tank. Again, to this day, my brother in Houston has had no complaints with his Bosch unit, now over 1 year. I would not recommend the Bosch heater to anyone that I like.

Recommended: No

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