Discolored hot water / HTP PH 76-60 hot water heater installed 5 months ago

[barbap]

Hi! I'm just a homeowner looking for help! Five months ago we had an HTP Phoenix 76-60 stainless steel hot water heater installed, but only about a week ago we started seeing discolored hot water (pale yellow-green) when running a bath. Cold water was clear. We have a whole house sediment filter which was changed out five months ago, and a Hague water softener, which was set to less than 1 grain at the time…

We drained our hot water heater as best as we could by filling the tub a couple of times, hoping to flush out whatever was discoloring the water. The color faded, but returned the next day.

We Googled and saw that possibly lowering the temperature of our hot water heater could help, so we took it down from 140 to 126 degrees. We also cleaned our water softener beads with Iron Out and did a regen. Calling up HTP yielded the advice to add more grains of hardness to our softened water. Luckily our softener has a mixing valve, so we raised it up to 5 grains, their minimum hardness recommendation.

We called up our town's water department and they confirmed that there have been no recent maintenance events, and reassured me that pH and chloride tests are all within spec.

All of these initial changes didn't make a difference, so we ordered up many water testing kits. Here are our stats:

pH: >7.6 (as high as our test could go, but was told that our town has been testing at 7.7 for forty years)
COPPER: Softened cold water: 0.0 ppm / Softened hot water: 0.1 ppm
CHLORINE: Municipal tap: 0.3 ppm / Softened water: 0.05 ppm
IRON: Municipal tap: 0.3 ppm / Softened cold water: 0.12 ppm / Softened hot water: 0.6 ppm (double the municipal feed)

So we’re assuming the yellowish-green color is from iron and a little bit of copper somewhere in between the stainless steel hot water heater and our tap. But what could be causing this?

Calling HTP again, they swore that we must have some galvanized pipes somewhere in our system, causing the corrosion to the stainless steel. Our system is all copper. We do have some aluminum clamps with zinc screws, but they said that shouldn’t affect our water.

Another thing HTP guessed was that the soft water could be reacting with the cupronickel coil. Is this likely? How delicate are these stainless steel units?

What we don’t want is water harmful to bathe in, or corrosion to our hot water heater elements or tank, or our pipes!

Does anyone have any insights? I would be so grateful! Thank you in advance!

 

[Master Plumber Mark]

you should take some pictures of the hot water heater and ALL
the surrounding piping going in and out of the unit
and post them here for people to see.........

My best guess is the SS heater has been plumbed in with some black iron piping somewhere going into
the heater which slowly corrodes over about 6 months and starts leaching rusty water into the hot side of the system or the tank ... Something like a tea bag just constantly making more rusty water

I have even seen where some doof installed a tub faucet and used black iron gas pipe
for the tub spout going into the tub and every time they used the tub it spit a bunch of rusty
water into the tub alone....

I have seen this many times before.... but I could be wrong too..
so lets please see the pictures so this can be ruled out....

 

[Sponsor]

 

[barbap]

Hi, @Master Plumber Mark! Here are pics of the unit and piping -- we don't see any galvanized pipes? Tell me if you see anything!

 

[Master Plumber Mark]

looks like they spent a fortune on propress fittings... which is ok

that is an expensive heater and it looks to be installed pretty well.
I guess you can check off the gas pipe or galvanized pipes leaching into the system..


Soooo The soft water could be reacting with the cupronickel coil. ???
What in the hell is a cupronickle coil??

I guess the only other thing you can do is by-pas s the water softener for a week or two and see if that
resolves the issue??? But that means the heater is a POS. if it cant handle soft water

If none of this resolves the issue I guess you will have to see if the plumber will warranty out this heater
and out of curiosity, what did this cost you installed like 6 to 8k??

I know you can get a simple common Rheem 75 gallon power vented heater for around 4500 in
my area... very easy to diagnose and repair or replace...

I am Just saying you got yourself a very extra special boy right there that might be a
total pain in the ass to actually repair some day ....
I hope the contractor will stand behind this product for you...

 

[Fitter30]

Have a pressure reducing valve? It only takes a 1/2" pipe plug to get brown water 15 seconds for water

 

[barbap]

looks like they spent a fortune on propress fittings... which is ok

that is an expensive heater and it looks to be installed pretty well.
I guess you can check off the gas pipe or galvanized pipes leaching into the system..


Soooo The soft water could be reacting with the cupronickel coil. ???
What in the hell is a cupronickle coil??

I guess the only other thing you can do is by-pas s the water softener for a week or two and see if that
resolves the issue??? But that means the heater is a POS. if it cant handle soft water

If none of this resolves the issue I guess you will have to see if the plumber will warranty out this heater
and out of curiosity, what did this cost you installed like 6 to 8k??

I know you can get a simple common Rheem 75 gallon power vented heater for around 4500 in
my area... very easy to diagnose and repair or replace...

I am Just saying you got yourself a very extra special boy right there that might be a
total pain in the ass to actually repair some day ....
I hope the contractor will stand behind this product for you...

Hi, @Master Plumber Mark! Thanks for your thoughts! Our plumber and HTP are not neutral parties to get advice from!

You are right on the money, it cost us 8K to get this HTP installed... Our plumber is fastidious and seems like an OCD savant, so we trusted his recommendation and got this unit, which he said was much more straight-forward to service -- and at the time I didn't know stainless steel could corrode.

So we did by pass the water softener, and our tests improved, the iron content came down to the municipal tap levels -- and the green color lightened, and became a bit bluer. But our water comes in at 22 grains, which is just too hard on our glass and pipes and machinery! We turned the softener back on to 7 grains and have been living with that the slightly green water for a while now... But is 7 grains still going to corrode the HTP tank and the copper-nickel heating element?

Do you think one day this green color might go away, after whatever was left in the tank flushes out and any new copper skins over?

We also got a chloride testing kit... HTP says that anything over 100 ppm isn't good for the stainless tank, we got somewhere between 100-110 ppm. Is there a way to lower chlorides? And I heard about corrosion inhibitors. What is that?

It is killing me that we spent so much money on something not compatible with our system! Could you explain how to "warranty out?" Do I have to get my plumber to admit he made a mistake and replace it on his dime? HTP has verbally admitted that their unit doesn't seem right for our water... We had a glass-lined Rheem previously and just shouldn't have reinvented the wheel -- but the reviews for our old model were just so bad, that we thought it would be smarter to switch.

 

[barbap]

Have a pressure reducing valve? It only takes a 1/2" pipe plug to get brown water 15 seconds for water

Hi! Yes, we have a PRV -- in fact it was a blown PRV that caused the demise of our old hot water heater, a regular old glass-lined Rheem. We had a Watts LF25AUB-Z3 PRV installed before replacing the heater...

Do you think this PRV could be causing our green water?

 

[Fitter30]

Heater shouldn't cause it with being glass line. If nothing else changed it almost has to be. My brother has a few rental houses probably has been a good tens years installed a prv after a few months was getting complaints for brown water finally changed it out and problem went away.

 

[barbap]

Heater shouldn't cause it with being glass line. If nothing else changed it almost has to be. My brother has a few rental houses probably has been a good tens years installed a prv after a few months was getting complaints for brown water finally changed it out and problem went away.

Oh, we don't have a glass-lined tank anymore. Our HTP has a stainless steel tank!

 

[Master Plumber Mark]

The only thing you could do at this point is install a back washing carbon filter before the water softener to get the
chlorine and chlormines out of the water... That would cost you about 1800 in my town for a 2 cubic foot unit
I dont know if this would be throwing good money after bad....

Unless the plumber or the manufacturer wants to reimburse you for the cost of the water
heater I think you are gonna have to threaten to sue someone about this....

The heater is obviously corroding faster than it should be and someone is gonna have
to man up and just do the right thing
Getting a refund on the heater alone would be probably the best you can hope for
and of course the plumber is going to probably piss and moan about this too but if he
is a legit kind of guy its really just a small hit for his labor to remove that pig and install
a power vented heater for you for free....

If you can get a refund, just throw in a common power vented water heater of your choice