Have you ever heard of that saying
"You get what you pay for"?
Well, this is a classic example of that
This is a rental property
They've had a new hot water system
installed about a year and a half ago
and the owners called me directly
because they've just had a gut full of
this thing working intermittently
He said, "Can you come out and just have a look?
I'm just tired of it. I just want it sorted.
I'm sick of the phone calls."
and the lady just had a baby so she just wants it to work
That's all she want. Just for it to work.
So it's not that hard
Obviously the real estate said,
"Okay, we need a new hot water system in."
They probably got three quotes
from three different plumbers
And the plumber that won the job decided that
probably the cheapest one
to put the Rheem Pronto 12 in
Normally there was a storage hot water system here
you can tell that by the slab down here
There used to be the hot water system
Now the storage hot water systems
they're usually about 40 megajoules
Now the Pronto has about 100 megajoules
99, to be exact
So it's a fair bit more gas, nearly double.
Or over double, I should say
But I'll show underneath
The plumbers put pipe here
So that's a 15 mil pipe going into it.
The cold, the feeder, the hot outlet is 15 mil
and then we've got the 20 mil gas main
And it goes down here and all the way
and then, bang, straight off into the small pipe
So really that should have been enlarged
The 20 mil pipe should go all the way,
really, back to the meter
But the thing is the meter is on the far side of the house
I'll show you
So the gas pipe must go up
I don't know if it's 15 mil
I'll go up in the roof in a minute and check and show you
So it goes all the way across the house here
all the way over the garage here
and the meter is on this side
You can see the meter down here
This i the 20 mil gas pipe
I'll go up in the roof and just see how he's hooked it up
and you can see what I'm saying
I'm hoping he hasn't hooked on to the small 15 mil pipe
because you can imagine
if the whole house is on that small pipe
for the hot plate and the bayonets amd everything
Anytime you turn any of that on it just starves the gas
Anyway I'll get up in the roof now and check it out
Okay so I'm up in the roof now
I found the gas pipe
I'll just show you where it is
So you can see, over there, that's the...
It goes for about three meters or something of 20 mil
and then it runs into the smaller pipe over there
it's got the small 15 mil pipe
and here's your first tee
so one of them would be for the hot plate
that would go off to the hot plate that one there
and then it runs along here
and this one probably goes off to the the bayonet
for the the barbecue or the room heater
There's probably another barbecue on that as well
and then this pipe here that goes all the way across
right over to the other side of the house
where the hot water system is
So that's the trouble that they got now
is that they've got the hot water system doesn't work
because the gas pipe is so undersized
It's not funny
It's just real disappointing for the owner
And also us plumbers that are quoting these jobs
and then other plumbers are coming in
and they're a lot cheaper
but that's because they're not playing by the rules
We've got all these rules
gas standards and the Australian standards
that we've got to stick to
and if you're not doing that, of course you're gonna win the job
but now the owners are stuck with this job
so now I've got two options
I can either just enlarge this gas pipe 20 or so meters
all the way to the other side
to get that little hot water system up and working
or maybe I'll have a look at maybe we could put it
near the kitchen sink which is a way better location
There'd be less gas pipe
because I only have to go a little bit of the way across
so anyway I'll give the owner a call
and see what he wants to do and let you know
Okay I've rung the owner
He's got a B16 at his place
that I installed about three years ago
He's been stoked with that one
so he just wants the same one on this one
So he just doesn't anymore dramas for this tenant
so he just doesn't want any more problems
So we are going to shift the hot water system now
We'll shift it to a better location
I'll just show you
So the meter box is just here
Here's the meter box
So I was up in the roof and that was just up in there
That's where the three meters of gas pipe is
that we got to connect on to
Here's the kitchen right here
it's the kitchen sink
So what we're gonna try and do is
put the hot water system on the wall here
and we'll run the the hot and cold pipe in there
and hook onto the kitchen sink
Now the reason it needs to be near the kitchen sink is
if you've got a new baby
and you just want a washcloth to wipe their face
if you're waiting for that water to come through
from the other side of the house like it is now
all that wasted water would come through of cold water
before you get the hot
and then once you're finally a little bit of the hot
you turn it off
so if you have it here you're gonna have water
within 5 seconds where you can wash your plate
and heat up for your face or for your kids
and then you can turn the water off
You wasted a bit of water going over to
the shower and the bath and stuff like that
but with the shower the water is like on there
for a minimum of 5 minutes
So, by the time you get your clothes off
the water is going to be hot and you can start using it
Where the kitchen sink, it's on, off, on, off all the time
And that's where you'll save a fair bit of money
and water by not wasting it
So that's what we're going to do
and I'll show you when we're finished
G'day, guys. Got it all sorted
So we found the 20 mil main up in the roof
above the garage there
We've cut a nice tee
and we ran a nice 20 mil main all the way down
And you can see it comes down the wall here
This is the 20 mil gas main
goes into the hot water system
And then you've got the 15 feed here
that goes up in the roof
We've tapped it into the 20 mil main in the roof
and comes down and goes to the kitchen sink again
And then this is the hot main here that goes down there
and straight in
and then there's a tee under the kitchen sink
So it goes to the kitchen sink
and then, from there, it goes up to the rest of the house
So they're noticing that right away
within five seconds they've got hot water.
They're loving it. The flow is a lot better there
It'll be hotter there as well, which is great
And, yeah, so they're pretty stoked which is great
So, yeah, moral of the story is
most of the time you do get what you pay for
And I know there's guys out there
that are happy with the cheapest thing
They get the best deal, best rate, that's cool
But, end of the day, it's always going to bite you
in the bottom just in case kids are watching it
So if you want some advice on your hot water system
because there's many different models out there
some are really economical, some aren't so much
And so, if you wants some advice
then please give us a call at Beautiful Plumbing
And we're happy to come out
and look at your situation and give you some options
Okay, thanks for watching and catch you later.