Replaced Water Heater and now have a water drip at flue connection

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Husky

Feeling the Heat
Nov 2, 2014
351
Rochester, NY
Just replaced my 23 year old gas water heater and now I have a water drip at the connection of where my flue meets my chimney. This replacement was pretty straight forward and was very easy as everything lined up perfect with old plumbing and exhaust flue. I noticed the day I replaced the water heater that I had some water on my work bench and the concrete wall had a water stain on it. I didn't think any thing of it and thought maybe I got water over their when I was hooking up new heater or from the old water heater when it blew. Any ways I went down stairs to check on water heater today and saw that my work bench had a puddle of water and I saw a drip in progress at the flue. I just did the replacement on Tuesday. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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Presumably condensation...(no unusual rains the day before)...maybe the exhaust from the stack is cooler than before, i.e the unit is higher eff than the previous one.

I'm no expert, but I would suppose there would be a burner adjustment for this...i.e. more intake air would drop the efficiency but dilute the water of combustion and lower the dewpoint of the exhaust?
 
Check the manual. See if it says anything about condensation. I know high efficiency furnaces have to deal with this, and some aren't even supposed to have their exhaust ducted through regular steel flues because of the water causing condensation (rust-through would mean a carbon monoxide risk). A rental I lived in had a PVC exhaust on the furnace, and a drain line leading to a little condensate pump. I don't remember if the water heater had similar.

Otherwise, this might also be relevant, so watch its behavior for a couple days:
http://www.rheem.com/docs/FetchDocument.aspx?ID=d5478691-88b1-4053-a112-0a3507ca6107
 
Looks like there was also condensation from the old water heater, if that's rust I see on your flue pipe reducer. Probably just a matter of degree. There are expensive or unorthodox fixes but maybe just channeling away the water and replacing rusted parts every couple years will do. Use at your own risk.
 
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Looks like there was also condensation from the old water heater, if that's rust I see on your flue pipe reducer. Probably just a matter of degree. There are expensive or unorthodox fixes but maybe just channeling way the water and replacing rusted parts every couple years will do. Use at your own risk.
I think you might be right. As I investigated around the work bench the water stain on the bench looks to deep to be 3 days of condensation. I'm going to keep an eye on it and see how much it is really dripping. I put a pan under it to see how much accumulates over a day. Maybe it will subsided.
Does anyone think a double wall insulated flue pipe would help with the condensation?
 
Does anyone think a double wall insulated flue pipe would help with the condensation?
I take it that is the only thing going into that chimney? what size is the chimney? I am sure it is way oversized so an appropriately sized liner would make a huge difference and it would be even better if it was insulated. Another issue is the really long horizontal run of connector pipe.
 
Yes that is the only thing going into the chimney. I believe it is 8" or larger terracotta chimney. My old furnace use to go into the same chimney but when I went to a high efficient furnace 10 years ago it used PVC out to foundation wall.
 
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