45 Gal. Indirect Water Heater

The Super Store Ultra heaters have a life time warranty against leaking; TO THE ORIGINAL OWNER. They were able to offer this type of warranty because they typically last 20 years or more and the average person stays in a home 7 years. But this created a problem for the manufacture because people with failed units that were decades old would expect a new one for free even though the original owner had sold the house decades before. To stop the bleeding the manufacture would often request proof that the person looking for a unit under warranty owned the house the year the unit was made. As I am sure you can imagine going to your town hall and requesting a copy of a tax bill from decades ago is not easy. So the system was not good for the consumer or the manufacturer. Thus a new system has been rolled out and the "N" signifies the change. From now on only "N" units will be offered. When you buy an "N" unit it will come with a 10 year warranty. To make it life time you only need to register the product with the manufacture within the first 6 months after installation. The intention is that this will motivate homeowners to register the product which will make warranty claims easier for everyone moving forward. There is no physical change to the product created by this change. If you still have questions feel free to give me a call. Chris 978 651 3301

This water heater is installed in conjunction with a boiler. So the efficiency of this water heater is directly dependent on the efficiency of the boiler that supplies it. However I can say with confidence that this technique is generally more efficient. But the real advantages are they last much longer and when part of a well thought out system have more more productive capacity when needed. If you would like to get into the math and have a much more detailed conversation about this versus other methods you are welcome to give me a call. Chris 978 651 3301

An indirect fired hot water heater is essentially a storage tank with an internal coil. Boiler water is pumped through the coil to heat the potable water in the tank. Put differently it is a heat exchanger with some hot water storage. The thinking is that the stored hot water will supply the user while the boiler is coming up to temp. Based on this logic there is typically nothing specific to one brand vs another. So if you have one brand you can typically replace it with another brand. However as a plumber I typically replace like for like for two reasons. First if the connections have not changed it makes the plumbing easier when everything lines up. Second most indirect units have a life time warranty. So typically I am replacing the failed unit with one supplied by the same manufacturer.

Great question. The answer would really depend on the person’s definition of the word efficiency. Trust me when I say there is more than one definition of this term. The one most associated with heaters is AFUE (annual fuel utilization efficiency). If we have a cubic foot of natural gas we know that due to the laws of chemistry and physics that it contains 1015 BTU’s (British Thermal Units) of potential energy. If you were to burn that in the least efficient boiler available by law today, meaning one with an AFUE of 80% you would extract 80% of the heat. (1015 x .80 =812 BTU’s) The remaining 20% of the heat would remain in the flue gas and be wasted. If you were to burn that in the high efficiency boiler I have in my home you would extract 96% of the heat because it has an AFUE of 96%. So the efficiency is determined to be the percentage of the heat the fuel combusting appliance extracts. And indirect fired hot water heater does not burn fuel. Thus it can’t have a typical efficiency. Its efficiency would be that of the boiler it was tied to as it is simply a heat exchanger. So in the first example you could say it is 80% and in my house it would be 96%. That is the long answer and I hope it helps. What I can tell you is that these tanks lose only ½” of one degree per hour. They are built like thermos bottles and have some of the lowest standby losses of any appliances out there. More importantly as I assume your question might stem from a desire to get a rebate, I can tell you most of the agencies that hand out conservation rebates recognize that indirect fired hot water heaters go a long way to saving energy. So even though they don’t burn fuel and have a typical efficiency rating they include them in their programs. However you would need to confirm that with them as the programs are different by area. Also if I lost you in my explanation I am sorry. You are welcome to give me a call and we can talk further. Chris 978 651 3301

I am sorry for the delay as this question was asked a month ago and just arrived to me today. This product has a life time warranty against leaking to the original purchaser. The answer posted below is incorrect. Now that original purchaser comment is important. In my experience as a plumber when you buy a water heater with an extended warrantee or a life time warrantee, the logical assumption is that you are getting a better quality product. In to some extent that may be true. But what is certainly true is that you are paying for a better insurance policy. Like with all insurance policies the insurers get real technical when you make a claim and look for ways out. So with life time warranties they often ask for a receipt or bill dated the same year the heater was made, proving that you lived at that address. The reason, these life time warranties are nontransferable. The actuaries know that the average American only lives in a home for an average of seven years, so if the product typically lasts that long there is no real risk in offering a lifetime warranty. When I install one of these for a customer I have made it a best practice to document all this and I put it in an envelope taped to the unit for the benefit of the person dealing with a warranty later. I have one in my home and it failed under warranty after 20 years. The supply house did not have records of my purchases going back that far. But I had my property tax bills going back decades. They accepted that as proof of me being the original owner and honored the warranty. If you want to read the specific legal info a PDF copy of the warranty can be found under the header Info and Guides on the the Home Depot product listing page. Chris 978 651 3301

Mine only last 5 years and 1 month... Not good

First I want to apologize for the delay in responding to your question. It appears you asked seven months ago but it only arrived at my inbox today. In answer to the question AFUE Annual fuel utilization efficiency is not relevant to this product as it does not use fuel. It is a heat exchanger. AFUE is a determination of how much heat transfers from flue gas through a heater exchanger and how much is left in the flue gas and is vented outside. With this product any heat in the boiler water not transferred through the coil returns the boiler and goes around the zone again. Chris 978 590 7543

No, this model is not energy star rated.

Mine only lasted 5 years and 1 month. Warranty was not honored by HTP, so I would go with a different company.

Dave, You can turn any heating system off. If you are using this Indirect Water Heater you are using a boiler (not a furnace) since it makes hot water (not hot air).The boiler being off means there will be no hot water coming from it to this indirect fired unit which means it, too, will be cold. That is not a problem at all for this unit. You should also turn off the circulator so that it would not be running continuously when the controls on this unit call for it to run. Even better would be to leave the boiler on at a very cool setting (like 120 degrees). If you let it get cold it is (1) more prone to leaking, and (2) prone to sweating. When a boiler sweats, the inside condenses water, thus making the target soggy. It could dramatically shorten the life of the target and the life of the boiler. Of course, if you leave it on you should definitely have a low water cutoff (safety) on the system. Hope this helps.