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Descaling & Drying Portable Tankless Water Heater Faucets/Showers

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Windnsalsa

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I have a Camplux tankless water heater AY132 model in my minivan. What are effective ways to descale and to make sure everything internally is dry before long term storage? There are videos and documentation about descaling on residential tankless heater but not on portable version. Eccotemp has a descaler pump kit which is meant for residential tankless version and which I have absolutely no interest in paying. Eccotemp also has an option for customers to ship their heaters to the company for tuneup which includes descaling. I have no interest in spending shipping & service costs each year that I want this done. I am a DIYer!

kit: https://www.eccotemp.com/eccotemp-ez-flush-system-descaler-kit/
tuneup: https://support.eccotemp.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013336208-Eccotemp-Portable-Tankless-Tune-Up

For the portable version, I was thinking of these steps:

-Add vinegar to our existing water container source
-turn on the shower/faucet for a little while so the vinegar-water combo wash through all the relevant internal components
-remove batteries
-turn off propane and disconect its connection
-make sure heater is vertically upright
-open the drain plug
-disconnect inlet & outlet water hoses to allow residual water to drain
-clean any water filtering screen (mine has a screen at the inlet connection)
-use air compressor to blow out additional residual water/moisture
-allow several days for things to dry out
-tape (e.g. painter's tape) all openings to block insects during storage
 
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a tankless heater is a tankless heater, just follow the manufactures advice. scaling is the main reason the tankless heaters fail and the harder the water the faster they fail
 
How many gallons are you going through? Scaling prob isn’t a concern for 3-5 seasons unless u have crappy crapy water.

For putting our ecotemp L10 to bed for the winter I just blow air through it with a compressor as I blow air through our entire camps hot and cold water lines. I then pull the drain plug from the heater and she’s fine.
 
740GLE said:
How many gallons are you going through? Scaling prob isn’t a concern for 3-5 seasons unless u have crappy crapy water.

For putting our ecotemp L10 to bed for the winter I just blow air through it with a compressor as I blow air through our entire camps hot and cold water lines. I then pull the drain plug from the heater and she’s fine.
Click to expand...
She might be fine, but scales build up over time. Water is from big city here. Bathroom showerhead has scaling. So, I am sure the same water contributes to similar scaling in the heater. It's good to be proactive minimizing scaling so I don't need to buy a replacement
 
Eco temp descaler is pretty handy plug and play, another option would be to repurpose a cheap garden sprayer to inject your descaling solution into the input of the heater like you were hinting at.

The garden sprayer option would get you a higher concentration of descaling solution vs dosing the entire storage tank.
 
Amending your steps, I would add:
- Remove screens from faucets. Clean screens prior to reinstallation. Any particulates that the descaling breaks loose would get caught by the screens, which you don't want.

- Allow the vinegar to soak in the system for ___ hours. I would consider pumping the vinegar through the system for a few minutes, but maybe the soak would be good enough.

- Thoroughly rinse the vinegar from the system. This would likely take three rounds, perhaps blowing out the system between rounds. This may be overkill, but who wants to come out of the shower smelling like vinegar?
 
740GLE said:
Eco temp descaler is pretty handy plug and play, another option would be to repurpose a cheap garden sprayer to inject your descaling solution into the input of the heater like you were hinting at.

The garden sprayer option would get you a higher concentration of descaling solution vs dosing the entire storage tank.
Click to expand...
Actually, I having been using a 2 gallon garden sprayer container (minus the sprayer section itself) as my only source storage tank, upstream of the external water pump. I don't understand what you mean by using the garden sprayer to inject the descaling solution as well as it being a 'higher concentration of descaling solution'.
 
HRTKD said:
Amending your steps, I would add:
- Remove screens from faucets. Clean screens prior to reinstallation. Any particulates that the descaling breaks loose would get caught by the screens, which you don't want.

- Allow the vinegar to soak in the system for ___ hours. I would consider pumping the vinegar through the system for a few minutes, but maybe the soak would be good enough.

- Thoroughly rinse the vinegar from the system. This would likely take three rounds, perhaps blowing out the system between rounds. This may be overkill, but who wants to come out of the shower smelling like vinegar?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the screen reminder. I added that to my steps in my OP. I'll turn on the shower head & allow all the vinegar only or vinegar/+ater solution to stream thru the tubings. Blow out with compressed air, & allow dry for at least 24 hours. BTW, have you descaled a portable heater using the method in the OP?
 
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rancher1913 said:
a tankless heater is a tankless heater, just follow the manufactures advice. scaling is the main reason the tankless heaters fail and the harder the water the faster they fail
Click to expand...
The manufacturer doesn't state instructions to descale. Eccotemp only discusses using their dedicated descaler kit which is priced ~$120 ATM & was $200 MSRP originally, which one would need to buy their liquid solution every year. So, those would be continuous extra costs.
 
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