Sensei teaches the art of easy serviceability

When it comes to efficient tankless hot water heaters, performance makes up only part of the total package. The ability to install, monitor and maintain a unit is just as vital.

Rinnai’s new Sensei line, which the company displayed at AHR Expo 2018, focuses on both the contractor and service provider. In fact, every component within the unit – designed for commercial and residential applications – was designed to be removed in under 10 minutes, including the heat exchanger, water flow servo, PCB and turbo fan.

In the past, such tasks might have taken a couple of hours.

“When we’re looking at a lot of the applications, we’re looking at what the owner is doing and what their functionality needs to be,” said Dipesh Parkeh, North America sales manager for hospitality. “We’re looking at the total solution; not just from the waterside and meeting the demands but also the energy side and carbon footprint.”

Besides the carbon footprint, Rinnai’s approach is to enable facility managers and homeowners to free up their physical footprint with a tankless design.

Because the units either can be anchored to a wall and off the floor or linked together on a compact rack – many structures these days don’t have adequate space for large-scale water heaters to begin with – those ground spaces can be more effectively used for other equipment, additional vacant space or storage.

“Hot water is a very big deal,” Parkeh said. “A lot of times, when people are looking at hot water … they have these larger systems and if they fail, they’re completely out of hot water. We’re designing these commercial units where it can range from 15,000 BTUs up to five million BTUs. And we’re doing it in a redundant fashion so if one unit ever does fail, you’re never out of hot water.”