Proper venting of a Rinnai tankless heater. 

So I bought a Rinnai L94i and when I looked I noticed the vent was way different than my old Takagi. I watched this video and I sent Mike an email. About 2 hours later I get a call from a 903 area code. ITS MIKE!!!! this dude called me!!! How awesome!! Mike is a fantastic guy, great advice and he walked me through what I needed.... Thank you Mike, From Zac in Houston!!

Mike yours videos are great,you should be getting paid not only from Rinnai but also from RU-vid. I'm impressed with the detailed of each videos you make, appreciated for all your help. Thanks

Mike The Rinnai Guy Hi, I got estimates and interviewed 4 Rinnai pros in order to purchase a tankless water heater. One said that we needed two RU199IN, another said that it wouldn't fit the job , another would only put in the RU199IN not the RUR, and the fourth only puts in RUR and said we would be able to run multiple appliances including the jacuzzi. I also spoke to Rinnai customer support and they were of minimal help. When I spoke to Mike the Rinnai guy. he answered all our questions and clarified everything. Mike also made suggestions to swap controllers to get timed recirculation instead of wifi to overcome some issues. Mike gave us the confidence in your product and we sealed the deal the next day. He is a great asset to your company. Regards -- Murray Bob

Mike, you’re the best! I had a problem with rain getting into my water heater. He emailed back right away, requested photos and then gave me his professional opinion as to the cause. It worked! Thanks, Mike!

Very, very helpful. Bought an open box briefly installed RUC series missing the vent termination and thimbles. Most of the websites have a single grainy picture and no directions so this was gold to me. Thank you.

This is gold, I cant beleive I havnt stumbled across your videos untill now. You are a plethora of tankless knowledge. I really seriously appreciate your videos they have given me a lot of insight on proper tankless installs. Im a plumber of just a hair over 2 years, currently studying to get my P1 license in NC and have been assisting my supervisor on a free class he teaches on all things service plumbing every thursday morning 2 hours before clock in. Feburary has become tankless oriented. All the things you have talked about and explained definitely have been paramount to my level of knowledge on tankless installations and servicing. Once again I very much appreciate your time and willingness to share your expertise. Thank you.

Love your videos! Takes the stupid out of me. Thanks for making me smarter ❤

Absolutely thorough- and EXACTLY what I needed to do my install.

Thank you, Mike, and your assistant for your outstanding instructional videos. You helped me to understand the value of using the right installation methods and proper components necessary to do the installation correctly. The technique of using cut sheet paper to make a square cut on the tube is a fantastic (and simple) technique. This video is almost 2 1/2 years old and is as relevant now as when it was made. It's no doubt helped dozens, hundreds or thousands of us to get through a tankless water heater installation successfully, and I for one appreciate your having shared your experience via RU-vid. For the record, I have only uploaded one video on RU-vid, and it was an instructional on how to extract a cylinder sleeve from a tractor engine, so I have some sense of the gratification you must feel for having helped others. Highest regards.

Now that's the way you teach!!

Wow Mike I’ve been able to install my Ru199 confidently because of your completely informative videos. Thanks so much!!!

Great video!! Extremely helpful. Mike also provide me great direction and suggestion as I am plannning an install!! Thank you Mike!

Thanks for the great informative videos you are doing Mike! They are very informative and give us DIY folks the confidence to install these tankless systems in our homes.

Mike, Thank You for all the expert advice.

Boy am I glad I found these. Excellent, informative videos, Mike. Great tips and easy to understand. Thank you for helping me with deciding on a Rinnai model and installation recommendations for my basement.

Thanks!! I dont normally install these, we are doing a Reno with an existing rinnai. I was a bit confused what the venting was going to end up looking like/ how it works. This helped clear it all up!

thanks mike... great guy and great plumber.. this guy no his field... called me up and explained everything to me... way to go thanks again..

Great video! Very informative. I'm in the process of installing my RUCS75i now. I was going back an forth on what venting to use and this video helped convince me to use the concentric piping. Thank you!

Great individual, we need more caring people like Mike, Thanks for all his help.

Wonderfully clear and complete instructions. Thank you! 👍

If you remove the metal tube from the plastic you can use a miter saw to cut both pieces individually that is the quickest way to cut both pieces in less than 3 minutes

Thanks! Incredibly helpful! Definitely helps in making a decision about the Rinnai tankless water heaters. Rinnai should pay you! :D

Mike, amazing video thanks! I've been digging around trying to find some more information on the multiple venting options and you explained things very well.

Mike-- Thanks so much for helping me diagnose a leak with my Rinnai tankless water heater over the phone! Also great advice for deciding whether to replace the heat exchanger or just buy a whole new unit. This guy is fantastic!

Love your videos, man! I love your paper trick for getting a straight cut. Quick tip on cutting the inner pipe, instead of measuring 1/2” out from the outer cut line, measure from the outer edge of the center pipe, and cut the same amount from the inner as you did from the outer. The inner pipe protrusion is set at the ubbink factory, so basically cut the same off the inner as you do off the outer and you’ll always end up with a factory-perfect inner-pipe protrusion. Love your channel!

Mike this is another great informative video. Keep it up. Great Job in explaining and showing all venting options.

thanks you very much Mike for you give some advance about the Vent. I Understand more clear. All the best to you and you family.

Thank you for all the info. Very helpful!

Very helpful. Thank you for making the video.

Very Helpful! Thank you! 🙏👍

Extremely helpful. Thank you so much, guys!

Thanks you for your videos keep up the great work

awesome video! very proffesional , straight to the point, easy to understand. thank you.

Great video, answered ALL of my questions.

Very helpful! Great videos. Thanks.

I did it with B Vent in my Garage Through the roof and it is working like a charm in the past 4 years. A poor family cannot spend another $600 on the termination kit.

Very informative video...just the info I needed...thank you!

Mike is the greatest. He emailed then called me to answer my questions. Where do you get that kind of service on youtube? Thanks again

Thank you for your videos; This is Great information.

Your videos are very informative. Thanks. I wanted to replace 2 50 gallon water heaters with one tankeless but they are not close to outside wall and the exhaust tube are connected thru the chimney thought I can use it for tankeless ventilation but I guess this video changed my plan

Thank you, very informative 👍

Very nice explanation!!

Great video and information, thank you

great Video and very informative!!!!!!!

Thank you your videos helped me out a lot . I learned so much from your videos. I will be emailing you soon when I get my unit thanks so much mike

Thank you sir ..just what i was looking for

Venting seems to be the biggest problem. The instructions are very vague and the translation into English don't help. Thank you for taking the time to make this video. Very helpful.

Fantastic video.

Very informative and thanks for taking the to share your professional knowledge.

Hi, and thanks for the greatest videos on tankless venting. We just bought a RL94i Rinnai heater. Then purchased the two pipes in your videos: The 18" VERTICAL ROOF DISCHARGE TERMINATION PIPE (SKU# 184118-S) and a 19.5" NON-CONDENSING VENT PIPE EXTENSION (SKU# 224052) both UBBINK. The heater is installed, It is a straight shot from where the heater's vent is through the attic and roof. I think the installers made a big error with the venting...if I look at the section in the attic, I see a gap between the two white poly pipes. Inside is a smaller metal tube that is accordion-like. The plumber then taped around the gap with silver tape. I am sure they did some bad cutting and rigged this pipe, as it is NOT what came with the unit, which was straight and smooth. Assuming they have ruined the piping after watching your video, I went and bought two new pipe (same ones), and think I can do it myself whit the help of your videos and since the ceiling and roof holes are cut. I assume the bottom of the roof termination pushes directly into the top of the extension (in the attic), even though the top metal (roof) piece protrudes only about 1/4" beyond it's poly. Thanks again for the five-star videos!!!!!

thank you. this was a great explanation and tutorial

Thanks for the great video. I was wondering how to get the proper pitch on the pipe when I cut the hole on the outside wall for the tankless. The template supplied with the heather says 5” from top of heater and was wondering if that will give me the 1/4” per foot required.

poor Michael! Nice videos.

Hi Mike thanks for the videos they are great. can you tell me when venting a non condensing horizontal through the wall do you leave it stick out from the exterior wall or cut it flush to the outside or ??

Hi Mike, Thank you for these videos, they are excellent and have inspired me to install my RUC98iN myself. I have a couple of questions about the venting that I'm hoping you can help me with. First is, what tool do you use to cut condensing vent pipe (all plastic) to size when needed? Second is how do I calculate the 1/4" per 12" slope required for condensate drainage? I'm in New Jersey and thank you in advance for your help.Tim Shannon

Very helpful video thank you. Mike what PVC elbows 90 and 45 go withe the red lettering pressure rated pvc ? I’m having a hard time finding them for 3inch pipe

For anyone with a long vent going straight up or up and then out, you may hear a loud noise due to the way long vents change the air mixture for the rinnai. First you gotta make sure you have plenty of gas available at the tankless, I had to install a bigger regulator (maxitrol 325-5L nat gas replaced old 325-3L). Then I had to tune the high and low burn mixtures. Check your manual but for me I had to turn on a bath tub full hot (triggers the loud noises), open the front, flip dip switch 8 on the top switches to put it in mixture tuning mode, hold down button B For 1 sec to put it in high burn tuning mode (starts flashing a small red light, the two black buttons are A and B). And used A and B to tune the mixture pressure, I turned it down (B) about 5 or 6 presses until the noise stopped. If I pressed it anymore the noise would return, and I could see the flame going out in the window, so I turned it back up a couple pushes until it was nice and quiet. According to documentation you should do this with a manometer attached and tune it to about 2.6"WC (from factory it comes around 2.8"WC high burn) however after playing with it, I had to turn mine down quite a bit more to about 2.3"WC to get rid of the loud flameout noise when mine was warming up for a high flow, like a bathtub. finally flipped off switch 8 and it was fixed. You can also tune it for low burn by following same process but holding button A for 1 second until you see red light. This might help with noises heard when first opening a small faucet tap. According to the documentation, it needs to be lower pressure high burn the longer your vent is. They really should make this more emphasized because I read so many comments complaining about the noises and lots of people just returned their rinnai tankless units rather than mess with it. Mike's a good guy he helped me test some things including tightening up all the vent pieces but ultimate fix was this high and low burn tuning process which my plumber did not know anything about. The documents are really poorly organized on the rinnai website with dumb file names but if you lookup your model on the website and click through the attachments you should find a file that has instructions for this process. Good luck! Hope this helps someone like me who had it all installed but was pulling my hair out with that loud noise when running a bath.

for venting out of masonry wall would you recommend concentric venting or 2 seperate vents

Hello great instruction video on venting. My question is how close can the outside exhaust pipe be near a window. Thank you.

Hey Mike. Thanks for the video. I was wondering if you have ever used the IPEX Low profile termination kit (196985) with 3" sch40 PVC pipe on the RUC80IN? I used a similar termination on my furnace and I liked the smaller holes through my rim joist and the look on the outside of the house. Any thoughts?

Just had my rinnai rl 75i non condensing tankless water water heater installed yesterday, works great but the exhaust is too long sticking out to the side , about a foot and a half long, can I cut that and make it shorter?

I have a question for you. Just installed an R53i Rannai and it works well. I used Rannai concentric vent pipe. Plastic with the metal center. When I plug in the vent pipe which is 4' long total. 90 deg plus an extension through the wall to the outdoors. Now when I turn on the water the heater comes on. But, quite often the burner starts then the unit rumbles the flame turns orange but will go back to a blue flame??? So, I just put the 90 deg on the unit to see what happens. It still does the same??? I can't figure out why??? Without the 90 deg the unit seems to work all the time.

Mike this is great! Is there any advantage to doing concentric venting vs PVC? I thought I’d save some money and do PVC on a 12 foot run. Any thoughts appreciated!

Mike, Thanks for video, it helped a great deal. I am replacing an old tank unit with the Rinnai rur160ie, in a walk-in crawl space. There is a pier 9” from the center of the existing vent hole. I am planning to use the concentric venting set up. Can’t I use a 45 degree elbow to give me the additional clearance that I need for this install?

Hi. I have a Rinnai RL94 tankless with exhaust iced up from the horizontal pipe. Do you know where I can buy an extension?

Hi Mike. My furnace is currently direct vented on the same wall I'd like to mount my Rinnai to. I'm uncertain which of the clearance rules i should use when running the vents for the Rinnai. Does the Rinnai exhaust need to be 3 feet above the furnace air intake if within 10ft horizontally? Or just 12 inches apart? Your videos have been a wealth of information. Thank you for putting them together!

helpful!!!

Hi Mike I just purchased a pre-owned RL94i series. The biggest question that I have of course is the Vinton. When I purchased a unit it did have a plastic gray venting pipe the per your instructions it should have the metal concentric venting pipe. The question I have is can I use some schedule 40 PVC pipe to vent the unit through the roof of my house because this will be going in the Attic?

Hi, Mike! Do you know how to solve the Rinnai Rl 75 error code 10 about air intake or exhaust vent? Because there is no hot water. Thank you for your excellent video!

Mike I a question. We have a vertical vent out of the basement. We have a window pit for the clearance. We have a HVAC unit going in . The pad is covering that area. Can I put an elbow go up 12 inches with a second elbow.

What sealant is used on the thimbles and where is it applied?

I’m needing to go 13 foot to get out of my roof with a v94i but they don’t make a vent that long. Do the extension connect together like can I buy 4 extension and get out the roof

When venting the intake and exhaust from a basement (newer Rannai tanks) with 2" Sch 40 PVC , is there a limit to how high up the elbow is above the unit and can there be more than 1 elbow on the exhaust in case you cannot directly go straight up with the venting because of HVAC unit outside ??

Hi Mike. I was wondering if you could talk about the clearance requirements for the venting. It's there a clearance requirement above a vent? I'm asking because the wall that we would be venting out of has an overhang.

I have a Rinnai V65i. I found a bunch of mud daubers nesting inside the vent from the outside wall. They are preventing cold air from coming in which in turn prevents hot water. I can't figure out how to take that black cap off so I can scrape the nests out, any ideas on how to do so? Should I take the pipe off of the water heater and pull the entire ventilation system off to scrape them off and then blow the debris out? Then after reinstall everything?

Does the Rinaii CU199IN require the 2"/4" or 3"/5" Concentric Vent for horizontal venting less than 4 foot long? Thanks

Mike please help what happens if I use a condensor elbow and tube? On a Rinnai v65ip?

I installed a 1 foot condensing vent on my RU series and now I see wasps entering the intake . What is best way to stop this before a problem is created. I see about 15 or so wasps inside so far.

Hello, do you have any videos on how to align the vent pipe to get a strait shot to the outside? I only need about 14” of pipe to pop outside. Also for a 5” pipe what size hole. Thanks

Your videos are really helpful. However, I couldn't find one that shows how you seal the outside wall while using a concentric vent. My outside wall has flanges and the ring won't lay flush.

I currently have a RL94IN but want to upgrade to a RU199IN since I need the additional flow it delivers to feed my hot water pressure washer. The pressure washer needs 4.5 GPM and the RL94IN won’t keep up at a 70 degree temperature rise. My question is, can I use my existing Ubbink non-condensing vent on the new condensing unit? Thanks in advance

can I run the schedule 40 PVC into schedule b after a long run. I have the upgraded unit with the separate intske. I Would like to avoid cutting into the roof.

How do I tell if my unit is a condensing or non-condensing unit. I am adding the snorkel exhaust to an existing unit. It is a Rinnai R75LS.

What about wall venting for condensation trap do you have to have it

How far below a non-vented soffit of a garage does a Rinnai concentric (horizontal) vent need to be installed?? The manual doesn't give anything. 12" ??

Does the vent tube have to be 1 inch away from combustibles just like b vent?

Mike, very helpful. Any tips on venting through a garage that is stick built with full size brick gender on the exterior?

Not sure how to get a hold of you but we are putting in one our self the only question we are how far apart does it have to be from another intake or exhaust on the same wall outside

Appreciate all your Renaii videos. Do you have a video that explains a simple way to clean out any obstructions (wasp nests, dryer vent stuff, etc) that may be blocking either the exhaust or air intake on a vertical non-condensing vent pipe. The vent pipe goes directly up from the unit in the garage, through the attic, and terminates above the roof. Have read somewhere where people have used a leaf blower to blow air from the vent opening in the unit up and out. But will that clear out any debris in both the intake and exhaust parts on the non-condensing vent pipe?

I have a R75LSi. There is nothing connected to the plug on the top of my unit. I believe it is the condensate drain. it's plugged. Is the condensate drain necessary?

Will Rinnai fittings and piping work with AO Smith 310c tankless water heater? It’s the exact same 3”X5” connector on the unit.

Hey Mike, Thanks for all the informative videos! I have three questions: Background: Previous homeowner installed a Jacuzzi non-condensing tankless indoors. Ran concentric Ubbink venting with a few 90s and 45s over 10-12 feet to a horizontal exit. 1. Is it ok if the installer kept the air intake portion of the termination INSIDE the house? (The larger black portion of the terminate with the intake vent is inside while the 3 inch exhaust is the only thing exiting the house.) 2. Installer did not orient the vent to slope away from unit but instead it’s about 2-3 degrees slopped back down to unit. 3. There is a black nipple at the base of the concentric venting but there is no condensate tube/tank being used, should I get one and install it? Happy to chat if you’re willing and thank you so much for being so giving of your time!

I am confused! I thought the non-condensing models did not have to deal with condensation. That was one of my main reasons with going with a single vent non condensing model. Looking at RLX94iN. Also he says you can't vent through a b-vent or masonry chimney. My home utility room has a hole designed for conventional water heating venting. I have not seem then the interior, but there is a huge concert vent going through the roof. It that OK??

How much depth does the pipes side into each other ? 1” I need to extend my venting and 10” extension is perfect, but if it slides into the elbows 1” on each side then it will be to short and have to order the 19”. Hoping you can tell me how much the pipe overlaps.

Hello, Great video can you tell me where to get the the lower enclosure to cover the pipes. The RX199IN is going to be installed on the outside of a brick hose. On lowes web site is picture with it installed but i can seem to find how to purchase. Got the top cap on order as well. Thanks David

My unit, rl75i says that it is a non-condensing unit but still has the nipple on the side of the vent. Witch style vent would I buy?

Can I trim the horizontal exit pipe so that it is not sticking out so far from outside of house?. Also I will be coming out to a brick exterior.. How would I seal that properly around the pipe because that black seal won't seal properly

Mike in reference to the V series and the RL series what about rolling a 360 degree pee trap coming off of the 5/8 npt nipple leading to the condensate trap??? Should that be done?

Swim should use 3” schd 40 pvc only? Or can Swim use 2”?

so for the rl94 I cannot use pvc?