water heater not vented?

[tjenkins]

Ok, problem with a house. We bought a house from auction. walked into the basement to see a brand new 50 gallon gas hotwater heater installed. Old heater is sitting in the corner which was a 40 gallon short heater. You can see that when they installed the brand new heater it is way higher than the orginal and that the vent pipe if attached would go either slightly down or straight across and not the 1/4 inch incline per ft of pipe required. Now here is my question? Can I just add a powervent and vent this through the wall? I'd hate to uninstall this brand new heater, I would say it is probably atleat a 400 to 500 dollar heater. The heater works fine when turned on it just isn't vented. I see draft inducer's for sale but I didn't know if they were universal or what I need to do to connect one to solve this problem.

[jadnashua]

I don't think this would work. A unit designed for a power vent has all sorts of interlocks on it to ensure that the fan is not only turned on, but actually working before it will allow the burner to ignite, then it continues to run a bit afterwards to purge any remaining flue gasses, or the raw fuel in case it failed to light.

[Dana]

Seriously, put this one up for sale on craigslist or something, get something that fits, and install it correctly. Any hacks you might do to make it sorta-work would be a both a code violation and a potential lethal-hazard. It might not gas you to death when it's new, but all bets are off by Y2020.

Maybe life is cheap in Pittston (how would I know?), but surely ain't THAT cheap! :-)

Don't even think about it- replace it and do it right.