My Water Heater Lasted 24 Years, and the Reason Was Where It Stood

The maker says a kyutoki lasts ten years. The contractors send notices telling me to have it looked at early. But the one at my house ran for twenty-four years.

A kyutoki is the gas water heater we use in Japan. It is not the big tank that sits in a basement or a closet in other countries. It is a box fixed to the outside of the house, and it heats water only while the tap is running. Nothing is stored. Because it is made to live outdoors, rain, sun and frost all get at it.

The difference came down to one thing.

Where it stood.

That is 2.4 times the ten years the maker talks about. It let me push a 200,000 yen replacement fourteen years further down the road.

Some people will read that and think their own kyutoki is bare out in the open, so none of this applies to them. Let me put the answer first.

The body of a kyutoki is not something to touch. The work requires a national license here, and a violation carries a fine of up to 500,000 yen.

Rain protection is a job for a contractor. Doing it alone brings a risk of fire and of incomplete combustion.

And the line from a contractor about needing an inspection is not something to take at face value. A detached house here carries no legal duty of inspection.

What follows is what I found out about where a kyutoki stands, and what the words from the makers and the contractors actually mean, sorted out from what happened at my own house.

The bath still worked, but the shower would not run

We built the house in June 1992. In August 2016, something changed in the kyutoki.

It was the middle of summer. The bath could still do oidaki, the reheating of the water already sitting in the tub, so I could still soak. Only the shower would not run.

It was not fatal. It was summer, so I could still manage.

Even so, my body felt it before my head did.

This is the end of it, I thought.

It had not stopped completely. But the feeling was clear. It had started to break.

The reason it lasted 24 years was the garage

The one at my house ran for twenty-four years. Looking back, that is an unusually long life.

I only understood the reason afterwards.

The bathroom was laid out from the side of the garage around to the back of it, and the kyutoki was installed inside the garage.

No rain reached it. No direct sunlight. The effect of the winter freeze was small too.

It is the same as the outdoor unit of an air conditioner. A machine left bare outdoors has its life cut short, no question about it.

If mine had been outside, it might have been five years. Ten at best.

I did not ask for this at the design stage. A floor plan that happened by chance turned into a large difference once I got old.

Inside a garage against out in the open

Inside a garage, the way mine was: no rain, no direct sun, little risk of freezing. The drawback is that some houses cannot do it, depending on how they are laid out. Twenty years or more is possible.

Out in the open, which is the usual way: any house can take it. Rain, ultraviolet light and freezing wear it down fast. The life is the ten years the maker assumes.

Mine was an accident of the floor plan. But for a person building a house now, or a person who can move the kyutoki during a renovation, simply being conscious of where it stands can push a 200,000 yen bill more than ten years further out.

What about a house where it already sits out in the open

I will be honest. Protecting a kyutoki that is already bare outdoors, after the fact, is hard.

My twenty-four years came from the luck of the original design, from the fact that it sat inside the garage.

There is no genuine cover that keeps the rain off the body

I looked for a genuine cover from the makers, Noritz and Rinnai, that would wrap the whole body. I did not find one.

The reason is simple. The body is built waterproof, on the assumption that it will be installed outdoors. The makers design it so that rain does not break it, so they do not sell a cover for it.

There is a part called a piping cover

When I checked the actual products on Rakuten, a large shopping site here, there were more than two thousand listings for piping covers from Noritz and Rinnai. Genuine ones run 3,500 to 7,000 yen.

But that part covers the pipes below the unit. The top of the body stays out in the rain. It is not a cover that stops rain from above.

Its job is to keep the pipes from freezing and to make the wall look tidier. The effect on the life of the body itself is limited.

If I really wanted a roof over it, I would ask a contractor

Some people build their own roof over the kyutoki. But if the ventilation is wrong, there is a risk of incomplete combustion or fire. This is not something an amateur should reach for.

There are third-party products sold as snow roofs. They are not genuine parts, and the model numbers and sizes they fit differ from product to product. They do not fit everything, so the product description has to be read carefully.

If I seriously wanted rain protection over the body, the safest route would be to ask the shop that sells and installs these units whether a roof can be added later. Whether the cost is worth it is a separate question, but asking normally costs nothing.

Some people would rather move the whole thing. Relocation work is possible if a specialist does it, but the cost swings a great deal depending on the state of the pipes. The first step is an estimate. Realistically, the easiest way is to think about moving it at the same time as replacing it.

Three things left to a house without the luck of placement

The first is watching for the signs of failure. Uneven temperature, weaker water pressure, an error showing on the remote. When those appear, that is the time to take an estimate.

The second is draining the water before winter. The manual from the maker explains how, and it can be done alone. It prevents a freezing accident.

The third is choosing the contractor with care. Finding the electrical and plumbing shop in your own town. They bend more than the big companies do.

My twenty-four years were the luck of placement. A house without that luck can only make the difference in watching for the signs and in choosing who to call.

The maker says ten years, but that is a JIS number

Open the manual for a kyutoki and it says: designed standard period of use, ten years.

I used to think that meant it breaks at ten years. When I looked into it, that was wrong.

The designed standard period of use is a span defined under JIS, the Japanese Industrial Standards, during which the product can be used safely. Ten years is not the life of the machine. It is the line up to which safety is guaranteed. I checked that in the official information from the maker.

The period for holding spare parts is ten years as well. So past ten years, cases come up where it breaks and cannot be repaired.

But that is not the same as saying it breaks at ten years.

My twenty-four years were 2.4 times the guaranteed period. If the place it stands is good, the machine keeps running for a long time.

Taking the ten years at face value costs money

Replacing it in a panic at ten years, while it still runs, is 200,000 yen thrown away.

Taking the sales talk of a contractor at face value means inspection fees that were not needed.

Leaving it alone and saying you will think about it when it breaks is the worst version of all, the one where it stops in the dead of winter.

Getting more than ten years out of it is not a special trick. Pay attention to where it stands and to the signs, and a kyutoki lasts more than twice as long. From what happened at my house, I can say that much.

I do not take the inspection line at face value

Once you pass ten years, the notices start arriving. Time for an inspection. Have you thought about replacing it.

When I looked it up, there is no legal duty to have a kyutoki inspected in a detached house. A condominium is a different matter. There are shared areas, so the management association has to arrange inspections.

In a detached house I can judge for myself. Inspection is their business, so of course they recommend it. But it is not an absolute.

I got twenty-four years on nothing more than the kind of relationship where I ask the electrical and plumbing shop in town to take a look when something bothers me.

I take what a contractor says as a reference. But I keep my own eye for judging.

Deciding on the contractor after the thing has broken is too late. It only takes talking it over once with my wife and children. If the kyutoki stops, we call this person. Deciding that much is enough.

Who I called when it broke

The one I asked for the replacement was not a big company.

He is from the same town, one school year above me. We were in the same schools from elementary through high school, though never close enough to be called friends. Still, he was the electrical and plumbing shop in town, at a distance where I know his face and the kind of man he is.

I helped with taking the old one off and putting the new one on.

When the work was done, he made a point of telling me something.

Do not make the price public. And do not go around saying you bought it from me.

He is not a man who takes too much profit. If anything the opposite. He wants to keep doing business in this town for a long time, and what he hates most is a strange rumor starting.

200,000 yen in my 50s hurt

Replacing a kyutoki is generally said to run 150,000 to 300,000 yen. A high-efficiency type, the kind sold here as Eco Jozu, costs a little more.

Because I asked a contractor I knew, mine came in well under the going rate. But that is a special case. Asking in the ordinary way, you have to be ready for something around 200,000 yen.

I was 57 at the time. I was not living on a pension yet, and even so a sudden 200,000 yen hurt.

That was when it hit me that preparing before the thing breaks matters. The life of a kyutoki is not the ten years the maker gives. It changes a great deal with where it stands and how it is used. Catch the signs, and move before it breaks. That was my preparation against repeating those three days once I am old.

The signs were there

Looking back, the signs of failure were there.

The temperature of the hot water stopped being steady. The water pressure in the shower got a little weaker. An error showed on the remote from time to time.

I ignored all of it because the thing still worked.

The result was that it broke at the worst possible moment, with the shower dying in the middle of summer.

When the signs show up, the estimate should be taken before it breaks. Breaking in winter is the worst case. A winter with no bath is something I do not even want to picture. It was summer, so I got off lightly. That was luck and nothing else.

The infrastructure of old age is people too

That man has helped me before this.

The gas range stand. The washing machine. An air conditioner. There are three at the house, and two of them came by mail order while one came through him.

What I learned by comparing is that there is a difference larger than the price.

It is this. When the thing breaks, who can I go to.

An air conditioner can stop and I can put up with it. When the bath stops, the dignity of daily life stops.

With a kyutoki, calm judgment is not available in the moment it breaks.

In winter, being unable to bathe becomes a matter of life. And even in summer, living with a body sticky with sweat and oil, unable to so much as rinse it off, takes more out of a person than you would guess. In those three days I learned in my own body what it means for the infrastructure of a house to break. If that arrives in old age, I will not be able to move on my own anymore.

When did you replace the water heater at your house.

Do you replace it after it has failed completely, when no hot water and no shower come out at all.

Or do you prepare at the moment the unease arrives. If this had been the dead of winter. If this had been the height of summer, with a sticky body and no way to rinse it off.

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