All right so gas pull heater, um everything's, going to be the same, of course in your water flow and your pool control system, and so there's not a lot of change. There. You'll still need to learn and be thinking about it. You're still going to run into water flow issues is probably your com, most common issue with a gas heater as well, because pool maintenance and pool issues seem to be more common than actual heater failures.

A gas heater is going to have an igniter some form of lighting the gas several safeties to keep the gas from exploding. Your house will keep the water from getting too hot so that, if you're in the pool - because you know if you you're actually heating with flame, you could actually get your water hot enough to burn you in a pool or in a spa and uh safeties. That will yeah prevent your house from burning down so with safeties um. Then you run into more diagnostic problems and run into more things.

You have to actually understand to figure out your pool heater, so i just i know from experience that gas pool heaters take a little bit more from us a little bit more time to figure out and understand and because we're working on ac systems, heat pumps seem To come a little more natural, but once you have worked on a few and you've read some manuals and you called some service techs for support or you've actually called whatever manufacturer got their service tech support, you're, going to find that gas heaters are pretty basic and A simple thing to understand and they'll be a lot more fun to work on like right now, i'd much rather get a call for a gas heater than a heat pump. I like something a little bit different um, so basically, you're gon na have two forms of gas. You'll either have your natural gas that comes in through the house, and if you have natural gas, then you're going to have a gray meter somewhere on the outside of your house. It'll be like a gas meter coming up out of the ground.

You'll know pretty much. The whole neighborhood's going to have this. You know that natural gas is being supplied to this neighborhood and that's more common um. If you don't have natural gas to a neighborhood and somebody wants a heater like a pool heater, then they have to install a tank.

So then, you're gon na have a propane tank somewhere could be typically buried underground and you just have a little dome in the grass to open the lid up and check if your propane tank is full when you're working on a heater, you can actually tell by Looking at the data tag, whether it's a propane or natural gas, it'll, say propane or natural gas, that's really easy way. Another way is your regulators are going to be colored different, propane regulator right before the gas goes into a heater there'll, be a regulator there. Propane is typically green. Natural gas is typically gray, so you can look at that to kind of give you clues and the reason you would do.

That is because you will get a lot of gas heater calls this time of the year where there's nothing wrong. Just their propane tank is empty. There's not much! You can do about that other than tell the customer fill up your propane tank and call us again. If the heater doesn't come on another thing to that you'll get this time of year is that the gas supply hasn't been turned on for a while to that area.

You have a pipe that just has air in it. Maybe the propane tank went empty and when they filled it back up, there was a lot of air in the pipes so the first time they turned on the heater. It tried to start three times, but there was just actually air being pushed the lines it couldn't ignite and it goes out on an error code and you show up and you try it again and it starts so. Just keep that in mind.

Sometimes the first time a heater has been turned on a little while there's still air in your gas lines, you got ta, try to start it reset it when it pulls that air that it did not ignite then, when dealing with gas, you need to be aware That the data tag on your pool heater same as a gas furnace, it's going to tell you how much inlet gas pressure you should have as a minimum and maximum and then manifold gas pressure. How much outlet going to your heater! You should have as your minimum and maximum so pay attention to that. If you got a heater that is coming on and it's not burning clean or you're getting a lot of random, maybe roll out issues, so the flame will actually light. It won't be a clean start up and the flame will roll out of the heater, because the gas is kind of there's been so much buildup gas in there and you have safeties that will sometimes go off on that and keep your heater from starting.

You know you need to take extra care to check your inlet gas pressure and your outlet gas pressure and the next time that thing's running so once you get it on check your pressures and actually see if you're, in the range, where you should be. If it's propane or natural gas, you guys are not going to be adjusting regulators or changing. You know incoming gas pressure. So, if that's an issue, then they need to talk to their gas supplier to actually change incoming gas pressures or find out what's wrong with their regulator.

Those are less common issues. Thankfully, so you don't run into that as much so on your gas heater when you have successfully turned it on which often is a struggle. Actually, you have to learn a lot of just pads and pool controls to turn on your heaters. The first thing that's going to happen is that the heater is going to try to prove that it has good airflow through its intake gas exhaust system through its uh yeah through the inducer motor.

So, thank you, so the inducer motor is going to come on and it's going to pull in air for combustion exit through the flue pipe and you'll have a sensor in your pipe for if that air exiting is way too hot or doesn't get warm right right Away then they know flame, isn't there and then so in order to make sure, because you're not going to want to run that gas without the exhaust air pulling through the heater they'll, have an airflow safety switch inside that heater, so your airflow safety switch is going To be normally open and the heater is going to make sure it's normally open and then, as soon as it turns on the motor, it wants to see the switch close. It's going to make sure the switch is closed. And then it's going to go through the safeties and make sure there's no open high pressure or high limit high temperature switches in the circuit, and then it's going to bring on your igniter. So your igniter typically is going to be like a hot surface.

Igniter you've seen them a lot on furnaces. They just glow bright red and get until they get hot enough. They can actually ignite gas on a pool heater. Some of them.

You will not be able to see they'll be just tucked away hidden completely out of sight, but you can always unscrew that open that up, pull it out and inspect it if it's got a crack through it or something like that. So when you get an error code that we haven't been lighting, there's a few things you want to check. Do i have gas supplied to my heater and is my igniter actually glowing red hot? Some of the older heaters have a spark igniter, and so then you will hear that trying to spark as soon as it gets that call and what it does. Is it lights a little pilot light.

So there's a little tiny tube coming from your gas meter. A flame sensor spark igniter all right there. It lights a little pilot light and once it it senses flame from that little pilot light, then it will open the gas valve so same thing with the igniter. It gives it just an amount of time to get really red hot and then it opens the gas valve and the next safety is the flame sensor.

So you have a rod that sticks straight into your flame and it's nothing, but just a metal rod with a wire coming back to the board. Nothing fancy it needs to be actually in a location where the flame can hit it. So if it's been knocked or moved, you got a problem. You can usually grab that and adjust it put it right back in the flame.

They also can grow dirty or like corroded, or something like that. Sometimes they're in a location where the heater has been dripping or water has been hitting it, and you just have to pull the flame sensor out and actually clean. It put it back in see if it works so the flame sensor. The way it functions is that, within three seconds of your gas valve opening you actually need to have flame there or they're gon na shut everything down and just run that inducer motor, because three seconds is too long to have gas flowing out into that area.

Without a flame you keep trying that and slowly gas is going to build up and then the first time something does get hot enough. Then we have an explosion. So you have three seconds for that flame to actually light and that sensor to say we have flame there. Basically, the sensor just it sends current from the board down the sensor and then, if there's flame now we have a path for electricity flow through the flame into the heater and connect to the heater ground.

So, every once in a while, you have issues where your whole, your whole heater bottom is like rusted out and there's not a good grounding location on the heater. Maybe somebody didn't ground the heater properly or where ground wire comes in. It's really corroded and you have to find a way to ground your heater well in order for that flame sensor to have you know its opposite end of the electricity from the from the board to flow through the potential difference. On that note, when you have heaters that are like really rusted out and that's pretty common, because you have a heater that sits outside in florida and it gets hot when it runs, it also has it's right there around chlorine, maybe it's been leaking throughout the years Inside the heat exchanger, we don't want to try to fix something.

That's going to be unsafe and so you're going to go to a lot of heaters that the whole bottom portion is just going to be rust and you're going to look under there and try to locate the actual burners where the gas it flows through and the Flame actually comes up and those are rusted or the supports for them are rusted anything like that. Then we just need to quote a replacement heater here. Let the customer know this is not safe to repair. This is not safe, and so you know a heater that might be three years old could have some rust on it, and i'm not talking about this.

So just use your judgment, you don't want to don't use this as an excuse to not work on a heater talking about rusted out to where pieces of the heater are falling down. You see rust chunks sitting on the pad. You have support systems for the burners. Actually, starting to break off, you can reach in and grab part of the panel, and it falls off.

That's going to be pretty common, you see that and there's nothing more frustrating than like being sent out to replace a board or a par or igniter on a heater. That's just completely rusted out, and it's like okay. This customer expects we're going to be able to fix this, and i have to now tell them. You waited on a part for a month because we're dealing with pool heaters and then i'm not even going to try to put this part in because of the rust, and that's really can be a problem with replacing gas valves.

They can be very difficult to get out. So if your heater element is at all rusted, you try to pull that gas valve out and you're straining in that area. You can often just break the heater trying to fix it, so don't be quoting stuff on a heater that should be thrown away. So after your heater has actually lit and you've proved flame through the flame sensor.

The next safeties that could potentially be a problem would be like, let's say, there's not enough combustion air being drawn in, and you could have like your flu pipe, your exhaust pipe coming out. The side could have bugs or critters or junk inside of it and or inside the blower wheel, yep some animal bird nests, so any anything related to the airflow could be clogged with critters, because you're dealing with something that's sitting outside, and so what will happen? Is it might have been enough for airflow for the heater to come on, but it's not enough to get rid of the amount of heat that we're dealing with the heater starts getting hot and you will have a sensor called a stack flu sensor that sits straight Into that exhaust pipe and it chops out brings the heater off once it gets too hot. In that situation, you need to open up your blower compartment. You need to check your flue flag, actually make sure you have good airflow.

Sometimes those sensors just go bad. They deal with outside weather and really hot temperatures they're plugged into that exhaust pipe, usually the manual if you pull up a manual they'll, have a chart that you can actually test your stack flue sensor. A stack flue sensor is the same as just like a water temperature probe, so you can actually pull it out and hook it up to the water temperature and then use the display of the board and it'll read. And if it's reading the same temperature, maybe as the outside air or your hand, that's holding the stack blue sensor, then you know this thing's actually working.

So that's not my issue. I don't have a failed sensor. I have an actual problem going on here that i need to address so and then your other limit safety switches are called limit switches. They go on the water on your gas feeder, so your water exchange exchanger somewhere on there there's going to be sensors plugged in to make sure that the water coming back to your heater.

It's not hot enough to burn somebody, and so those are just little tiny round switches that open when they get too hot and they'll have on the side of them. They'll have a temperature rating. You can look at it, it'll see, okay. What temperature is this supposed to open at those often rust out the connections where the wires they rust out so bad that you can't read through them or they crack off? Those are failures that can happen, otherwise they fail because there's been a water issue, so many times they've been opening and closing they get stuck open, so normally they're closed.

It gets too hot they open. So if you have failure, that's not related to rust, then you turn that pull heater on and find out. Why is this getting too hot and reasons it could be getting too hot are all related to water flow. I need good water flow in good.

Water got good water flow out, you're going to have to now start diagnosing. Your water flow, some uncommon water flow issues. Gas pool heaters have safeties inside the heat exchanger to prevent explosion so like. If you have water in there, that's not flowing well, and you have flame.

The water is going to get hot enough to boil the pressure inside. That chamber is going to be pretty crazy. A lot of times, you'll see your pool heater just start shaking and making cracking sounds like it's ready to burst and usually the safety shuts it off at that point. But if not, there are backup safeties built into the heater heat exchanger.

You have a bypass valve. That's on a spring and if the pressure gets too high, that bypass valve gets, pushed open and cold and cold water and the hot water can just kind of mix right there in that area, so that you don't build up pressure inside the train burn. So if that valve has been opening and closing a lot, it can break, it can crack, and so you show up and the pool heater is making a weird sort of hissing sound, no matter what you do, even though water flow seems fine in the pool area. The heater's overheating and shutting off it's shaking, you actually have to open up the heat.

Exchanger manifold, find that valve pull it out, see if it's cracked in that situation, you're going to need the manual it'll show you the parts list, a breakdown of the heater. Where is that valve at so you pull up the manual look at the the the section where diagram where it shows you each part of the heater broken apart. What bolts so you'll find that the manuals can be pretty helpful with that or tech support again pentair hayward. They have great tech support for heaters.

Please call them. They will teach you a lot about servicing a heater and they're, usually not that bad to wait on the phone for them. It's not that bad. So that's just a brief overview of your heaters.

Each thing that i went through on there is listed with pictures on that manual, quick note on what happens when it goes wrong, quick way to diagnose it, each one of those things that i just went through those safeties so use that, and that will help you And that's just your basic tour of gas gas systems, any questions. Okay! So final note, then, when you're doing a maintenance, we've just ordered a maintenance on the gas heater open the panels to see if bugs need to be cleaned out, animals lizards rats, whatever check behind the board for a lizard check for evidence, the rats have lived in There, if they have, then we just need to look at wiring issues a lot of times, rats just chew through wires, so you're pulling error, codes or stuff like that, and the issue is some critter squirrel rat has gotten in there so always open your heater to See if there's anything that needs to be cleaned up or tightened up, but most of the time on a gas heater maintenance which what the property manager who has called you out there is looking for, is they want to know it's operatable that the guests can just Come out and turn it on when they check in so you make sure gas valve's on your breaker's on you go back into the pool area, how's the guest going to turn this on. They have a dial, okay, i'll turn the dial and just see. If this heater comes on, make sure you're checking the functionality of this heater based on how the owner property manager or the guest checking in the home is going to use this heater, that's probably the most important thing on your maintenance and then don't just turn it On and oh, i saw flame turn it back off, let it run 5-10 minutes, that's when you're going to run into water flow issues, things getting way too hot you're going to know that you have other problems.

So that's those are the things that i want. You checking for sure on maintenances and then there's lots of videos that we have on hvac school on how to check gas pressure. So if you're at all confused on how to do that, with your pools, pool heaters, gas pool heaters or furnaces just watch a video, it's pretty pretty straightforward stuff cool thanks enjoy gas heaters thanks for watching our video. If you enjoyed it and got something out of it, if you wouldn't mind hitting the thumbs up button to like the video subscribe to the channel and click, the notifications bell to be notified when new videos come out, hvac school is far more than a youtube channel.

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