Part 2 · Systems

02·PLU

Plumbing & Hot Water

A gas tankless water heater, a water softener, and a water treatment stage feed the house — plus the shutoffs, hose bibs, and pressure equipment every owner should be able to find fast.

956 N Noble Loop · Showing Edition · Rev A · Aug 2026

At a glance

Hot water is produced by a Rinnai RUC80i (retail RUC80iN) indoor condensing tankless gas water heater — there is no storage tank, so hot water is generated as you use it rather than stored and reheated. Ahead of it in the water line is a two-tank water treatment train (installed 2017): a metered water softener plus a second, day-scheduled tank, both on Clack WS1 control valves — one with Clack’s colour touch-screen, one with the standard three-button LCD — feeding from a shared salt/brine tank. Per the owner, the train is roughly three times the capacity a typical family here needs.

Where
Owner-confirmed: everything is in the back bay of the garage — the water treatment tanks and brine tank stand right next to the wall-hung Rinnai tankless heater, on the unfinished-wall side of the bay. One trip to that corner of the garage reaches the heater, both treatment tanks, the salt, and the service valves.
Must know
A tankless heater means you will not run out of hot water — but it also means no power/gas = no hot water, instantly, with no tank reserve to draw down. The main water shutoff is owner-confirmed and photographed: south wall of the garage, right beside the main vehicle garage door, about 5½–6 feet up the wall — a brass lever ball valve, quarter-turn. Also worth a day-one buyer task: the Rinnai’s product-registration mailer is still taped to the unit, meaning it was likely never registered with Rinnai — registering it (even late, under the new owner) can affect warranty support.
Status
Equipment installed and, as far as known, operating. The tankless heater’s model, the treatment train’s location and valve family, and the main water shutoff location are now confirmed; the tankless serial, the treatment system’s assembler/dealer brand, and several other items below remain unconfirmed — see the to-confirm chips throughout.
Rinnai RUC80i indoor condensing tankless gas water heater mounted on a wooden wall stand, with its yellow EnergyGuide label, yellow CSST gas line, and red/blue isolation valves.
The house’s Rinnai RUC80i (RUC80iN) tankless water heater — the EnergyGuide label on this exact unit is what resolved the model.
Main floor — Rinnai RUC80i tankless water heater; Water treatment — twin tanks + Clack valves Simplified main-floor plan traced from the architect’s sheet: covered patio and family room across the rear, kitchen with island and walk-in pantry, dining, entry hall and den/office on the street side, and an L-shaped three-car garage whose deep back bay carries the mechanical equipment. UP COVERED PATIO 9′ CEILING GARAGE 21′1″ × 19′10″ BACK BAY SHOP · 11′0″ × 20′8″ FAMILY 19′7″ × 16′0″ NOOK 10′1″ × 11′0″ BATH MUD KITCHEN COFFEE PANTRY HALL PKT BUTLER’S PANTRY DINING 13′4″ × 10′5″ BAR ENTRY CLOSET DEN 11′10″ × 12′2″ STREET WATER HEATER WATER TREATMENT
Location: main floor — water heater · water treatment.

2Everyday use

Day to day, this system asks nothing of you. Hot water is simply always available, and the softener/treatment stage run themselves.

  • Hot water: just open the tap. The tankless unit fires on demand and delivers a steady temperature for as long as you run water — there’s no tank to “run out” and then deliver a cold surprise mid-shower, which is the main everyday difference from a tank-style heater.
  • Water softener: runs automatically on its own schedule (metered by water use or a timer, depending on the controller). The only thing you do is keep its salt tank filled — see Maintenance.
  • Second treatment tank: also automatic, and on a day-based schedule rather than a water meter — its display counts down days to its next regeneration/backwash (photographed showing 9). It asks nothing of you day to day. To confirm: exactly what media it holds and therefore what it treats for — see the identification callout in Specs.

Endless hot water, with one caveat

A tankless heater has a small minimum flow rate needed to “ignite” and a brief delay (a couple of seconds) before hot water starts, same as any gas water heater bringing a burner up. Once running, it holds temperature for as long as you want — back-to-back showers, a full tub, and the dishwasher running at once are all fine within the unit’s flow-rate capacity.

4Maintenance

Annual descaling is not optional for a tankless heater

Unlike a tank heater, a tankless unit’s heat exchanger is a narrow passage that scales up with mineral deposits over time — enough scale buildup reduces efficiency and can eventually damage the unit. Rinnai specifies an annual descale/flush using a descaling pump and a vinegar or citric-acid solution through the built-in service valves, more often in hard-water areas. This unit already has a Rinnai isolation/flush valve kit installed (the red/blue-handled service valves visible at the unit), so a plumber — or a confident DIYer with a descaling pump — can flush it without cutting any pipe. The whole-house water softener upstream reduces scale formation and likely extends the safe interval somewhat, but does not eliminate the need for periodic flushing.
  • Tankless heater — annual flush/descale: using the installed isolation/flush valve kit, a licensed plumber (or a confident DIYer with a descaling pump kit) flushes the unit once a year. Budget this as a recurring line item.
  • Tankless heater — inlet water filter: the RUC80i has a small inline screen filter on the cold-water inlet; check/clean it at the same time as the annual flush.
  • Tankless heater — product registration: the Rinnai product-registration mailer is still attached to the unit as photographed, which suggests it was never mailed in. Registering it (with Rinnai directly, at rinnai.us/product-registration) is worth doing even now — it can matter for warranty support.
  • Water softener — resin bed: the resin media inside the tanks typically lasts 10–15 years before it needs replacing; not a concern in the near term for a 2017 install, but worth noting for the maintenance calendar.
  • Second treatment tank: it regenerates/backwashes itself on a day timer, so the only recurring task is a periodic media check at professional service. To confirm which media it holds (carbon, sediment, or iron/manganese) — that determines whether it ever needs a media change-out and on what horizon.

Salt, hardness, and service — scale these to how much water the house actually uses

The softener does not consume salt by the month; it consumes salt per regeneration, and it regenerates when a set number of gallons have passed through it (its head is metered, and its home screen shows the gallons of capacity still remaining before the next one). So the real driver of every number below is water volume, and the number of people living here is simply the easiest proxy for it. This matters more than usual in this house: per the owner, the train is roughly 3× the capacity a typical family here needs, which means it regenerates far less often than a right-sized system would — a two-person household can go a remarkably long time between salt fills, and equally can forget the tank exists until soft water quietly stops. Check on a schedule, not on a hunch.
HouseholdCheck / refill saltTap hardness testProfessional service
2–3 people (typical for this house)Look every 2 months; expect to actually add salt roughly 2–3×/yearEvery 6 monthsEvery 12–18 months
4–5 peopleLook monthly; expect to add salt roughly 4–6×/yearEvery 3–4 monthsAnnually
Heavy entertaining / full house (~8–10)Look monthly and before any stretch of guests; expect to add salt monthly-ish while occupiedEvery 2–3 monthsAnnually
Away / vacant for monthsTop up before leaving; check for salt bridging on returnOn return, before assuming it still worksBefore returning to full-time use after a year idle

Where these numbers come from: the tasks and the 12–18-month professional-service interval are standard water-treatment industry guidance (see Documents). The allocation across household sizes is reasoned guidance built from the owner’s statement about the system’s sizing plus ordinary per-person water use — it is deliberately conservative (check more often than you will need to act) and is not a manufacturer schedule for this specific system. Once the assembler is identified (see Specs), replace it with their programming card, which will state the actual salt dose per regeneration and the grain capacity these intervals are really a function of.

  • Salt type: owner-confirmed — the softener runs on "salt nuggets," a yellow bag bought at Home Depot. Salt nuggets are a standard coarse-pellet softener salt, well suited to this kind of system. Exact brand/product name to confirm — the owner is tracking down the precise product for this page.
  • Salt bridging: watch for a hard crust forming above the water line inside the brine tank, which hides an apparently-full but actually-empty reservoir. It is more likely in a lightly-used, oversized system precisely because the salt sits undisturbed for longer — break any crust up with a broom handle. This is the most likely way soft water quietly stops in this particular house.
  • A quick sanity check any time: the touch-screen head’s home screen shows gallons remaining. If that number never moves between two visits weeks apart, the meter or the bypass wants looking at.
Two Clack WS1-series control valve heads on the water-treatment tanks — one with a color touchscreen, one with a blue-backlit three-button LCD — mounted below a plywood equipment backer board carrying a shared power strip.
The two Clack WS1 control heads — the colour touch-screen valve (left, the metered softener, showing its gallons-remaining countdown) and the standard three-button LCD valve (right). Both run from a shared power strip on the backer board above.
Wide view of the garage back bay: twin black water-treatment tanks with their control heads, the black brine tank and stacked salt bags at right, a yellow CSST gas stub in the wall, and the underside of a blue shop air-filtration unit hanging at the upper right, cut off by the frame.
The full treatment station in the garage back bay. The blue unit clipped at the upper right is not plumbing — it is the garage’s shop air filter, which simply hangs above the tanks; see the Garage page.

The blue cabinet above the tanks is not part of this system

Earlier drafts of this manual flagged an "unidentified blue-grille cabinet" above the treatment tanks as a possible third vessel, UV/ozone stage, or even the steam generator. The owner has resolved it: it is a shop air filtration unit — a hanging garage air cleaner — and nothing to do with the water system. A full-resolution crop of the photo backs that up: behind its black expanded-metal grille is a white pleated air filter, and the corrugated stainless line that appeared to "feed" it is simply a treatment-valve drain hose passing in front of it. It is expected to convey with the house; it is documented on the Garage page, not here.

Winter freeze protection

The tankless unit has an internal freeze-protection heater that needs continuous electrical power to work — never cut power to the water heater in cold weather, even if it’s not in use, unless you’ve also fully drained it. If the house will sit unheated and unattended in freezing weather, draining the unit per its manual is the safer move.

5Troubleshooting

  • No hot water at all: check that the unit has power (it needs electricity even though it burns gas — the igniter, control board, and fan are electric) and that the gas valve to the unit is open. If both are fine, check the digital control panel on the front of the unit for an error code.
  • Hot water comes and goes / temperature swings: can indicate the flow rate is below the unit’s minimum-activation threshold (e.g., a very low-flow faucet), a partially clogged inlet filter, or scale buildup — start with the inlet filter, then consider the annual descale is overdue.
  • Water is soft/hard unexpectedly: if water suddenly feels hard (soap doesn’t lather, spots on glassware return), the softener may be out of salt or need a service call. If it’s just been installed or reset, it can also be in bypass — see the bypass valve note in Specs.
  • Visible mineral buildup on fixtures despite the softener: could mean the softener is in bypass, out of salt, or undersized/overdue for service — worth a manual check of the salt tank and the bypass valve position before calling a pro.
  • Any active water leak: stop reading and go to the main shutoff — see the callout below and the Water leak runbook.

6Specs & identity

Tankless water heater
Brand / modelRinnai RUC80i, retail SKU RUC80iN (natural gas). Resolved two ways now: the unit’s own EnergyGuide label reads REU-KBD2530FFUD-US(RUC80i) with (KBD25-N) confirming the natural-gas variant, and the factory delivery carton (photographed on-site, delivered 2017-06-18) gives the full factory model string REU-KBD2530FFUD-US-N — the exact string Rinnai tech support and parts diagrams use. Front badge is embossed RUC80.
TypeIndoor, natural-gas-fired, condensing tankless (on-demand) water heater — Rinnai’s Ultra Series super-high-efficiency line, vented with a concentric collar, with a condensate drain
Capacity152,000 BTU/H (carton rating; EnergyGuide’s modulating range is 15,200–152,000 BTU/h), flow rate 0.4–8.0 GPM per the factory carton (0.4 GPM is the minimum activation flow — the practically important number, since below it the unit won’t fire), UEF 0.92, ENERGY STAR qualified. (The EnergyGuide label’s "3.9 gpm" is the standardized DOE test-condition figure at a ~70°F rise, not the unit’s real-world maximum flow — worth knowing so this doesn’t read as a 3.9 gpm heater.)
Compatible temperature controllersFrom the factory carton: MC-91-2, MC-100V, BC-100V, MCC-91-2 — the exact list needed to add or replace a wall temperature controller. Not printed on the unit’s own plate; only on the shipping carton. Whether one of these is actually installed on a wall somewhere — to confirm.
Serial numberowner's edition
Current temperature setpointowner's edition
Install dateowner's edition
LocationBack bay of the garage — owner-confirmed, wall-hung on the unfinished wall immediately beside the water treatment tanks
Gas shutoff (unit)owner's edition
Isolation/service valvesRinnai isolation/flush valve kit is installed (red/blue-handled service valves with flush ports) — the unit can be descaled/flushed without a plumber cutting pipe
Product registrationThe Rinnai product-registration mailer is still taped to the unit as photographed, suggesting it was never registered — worth doing as a day-one buyer task (rinnai.us/product-registration); may affect warranty support
Fixtures — toilets
ModelGerber Viper, model VP-28-5xx, 12" rough-in — identified from a tank-and-cover carton on the same June 2017 delivery pallet as the Rinnai. The 12" rough-in dimension is the number needed to source or replace a toilet in this house; the Viper line is a two-piece, pressure-assist-free 1.28/1.6 gpf toilet.
Coverageowner's edition
Water treatment train — identity
LocationBack bay of the garage — owner-confirmed, immediately beside the Rinnai tankless heater
ConfigurationTwo composite (FRP) media tanks + one brine/salt tank, all in a row. The wide black drum at the right of the pair is the brine tank (it has a removable lid and the salt bags stacked beside it) — it is not a third treatment vessel.
Control valvesClack Water Specialist WS1 — certain. Both tanks carry Clack WS1 valve bodies, identified by the WS1 body geometry and Clack’s signature blue locking clips on the inlet/outlet, drain and bypass fittings. Clack is the valve maker and sells to hundreds of OEM assemblers, so this identifies the mechanism, not the brand of system.
Left tank — softenerMetered water softener on a Clack WS1 fitted with Clack’s colour touch-screen electronics package (high confidence). Its home screen shows a system-name banner ("Water Treatment" — an OEM-configurable field, left generic here), a day/time tile, a gallons-remaining tile, a green treatment (service) state, and the WS1 regeneration ring: treatment → backwash → draw → rapid rinse → tank refill. The presence of draw and tank refill (brine cycles) plus the adjacent brine tank makes "softener" certain; "metered / demand-initiated" follows from the gallons-remaining counter.
Left tank — reading at photo timeowner's edition
Right tank — day-scheduledSame Clack WS1 body with the standard three-button, blue-backlit LCD head, running a day-based (time-clock) program. This resolves a question earlier drafts left open: the bare "9" photographed on that display is days until its next regeneration, not a flow rate — Clack’s own time-clock manual states the display toggles between time-of-day and days-to-next-regeneration, and the two photos of this head show exactly that (11:40 in one, 9 in the other). A day-timer with no brine tank of its own is the classic signature of a backwashing filter (carbon / sediment / iron) rather than a second alternating softener — confirm the media at service.
Assembler / dealer brandNot determinable from the available photos. The tanks are unbranded black composite vessels; the only label on either is a small two-column sticker low on the right tank, which is illegible at the available resolution and, by its layout and corner logo, is almost certainly the vessel manufacturer’s pressure-rating label rather than a dealer label. The touch-screen’s system-name banner — the field an OEM would brand — was left at a generic "Water Treatment". See the identification callout below for how to settle this in about ten seconds.
Brine tank / saltowner's edition
Bypass valve (whole-system)owner's edition
Shared powerBoth control heads run from a shared surge-protected power strip mounted to the plywood equipment backer, not dedicated receptacles — if that strip is switched off or trips, both valves lose their programmed clock
SizingPer the owner, roughly 3× the capacity a typical family in this house needs (owner-reported; the tanks carry no legible capacity label, so the multiple is not independently verified) — consistent with the two tall tanks and with the very slow salt consumption an oversized softener implies. This is why the Maintenance section above is a usage table rather than a single cadence.
Dealer / installer / service contractowner's edition

How to identify this system in ten seconds — tap the telephone icon

Clack supplies its touch-screen electronics to OEM assemblers with a built-in dealer information screen (Clack’s own spec sheet for the package lists it explicitly, with an optional dealer-logo insert). On this house’s left-hand head, the bottom row of the home screen carries five round icon buttons — and the second from the left is a telephone. That is the dealer screen. Tap it and photograph what it shows: that is the installing company’s name and phone number, which in turn names the system line, the programming card, and the people who have serviced it since 2017. It beats any label hunt.

If the dealer screen is blank or was never programmed, the fallbacks, in order: (1) a straight-on macro of the small white label low on the right tank — the vessel rating plate, which at least gives tank make and size; (2) look under the brine-tank lid and on the brine well for an installer sticker; (3) the 2017 build file or the salt supplier. Do not expect the tanks themselves to carry a brand: they are deliberately plain, and the assembler left the touch-screen’s name banner generic.
Shutoffs, pressure & waste — critical items to gather
Main water shutoffLocated and now photographed (owner-confirmed 2026-08-05): south wall of the garage, right beside the main vehicle garage door, about 5½–6 feet up the wall — a brass lever-handled ball valve (quarter-turn, no packing nut to fight) on an insulated riser. See the photo below and the Part 0 emergency page.
Water pressure regulator (PRV)owner's edition
Sewer cleanoutowner's edition
Under-sink shutoffsowner's edition
A brass lever-handled ball valve set into black foam pipe insulation on a garage wall, immediately beside the overhead vehicle door track and hardware.
The main water shutoff, photographed 2026-08-05 — a lever-handle brass ball valve on an insulated riser on the garage wall next to the main vehicle door, about 5½–6 ft up. Also placed on the Start Here / Day One page.
Hose bibs & exterior water
Hose bibsExterior spigots exist around the house — winterization steps (shutoff, drain, disconnect hoses before frost) are covered on the Irrigation & Exterior Systems page, not duplicated here
Irrigation backflow preventerResolved — not on this page. A Zurn Wilkins 1" model 850 double-check valve assembly (DCVA), below grade in its own valve box with its own isolation ball valves, protects the drinking water from the irrigation lines. This is the irrigation system’s backflow device, separate from anything on this page — full detail, photo, and the annual test requirement are on Irrigation & Exterior Water.

7Documents & links

The tankless heater’s model is now confirmed (Rinnai RUC80i / RUC80iN), so its official spec sheet is archived below. The water-treatment valves are confirmed as Clack WS1 — one with Clack’s touch-screen electronics, one with the standard three-button board — but the assembler who built the system around them is still unknown, so the Clack references below are the valve-level manuals rather than a house-specific manual.

To archive (Phase B/D)

Download and locally archive the Rinnai spec sheet and, once the serial/date code is legible, its full owner’s manual from the document library. Once the treatment system’s assembler is identified — most likely straight off the touch-screen’s dealer information screen — replace the generic Clack links with that company’s house-specific manual and programming card, which is what actually documents the grain capacity, salt dose, and media in the second tank.
Section 8Technical reference ExpandCollapse

The engineering layer — for a buyer's technician, or a curious owner.

Tankless vs. tank, briefly: a tank water heater keeps 40–80 gallons hot and ready at all times, reheating as it’s drawn down — simple, but it can run out under heavy simultaneous use and wastes some energy keeping stored water hot around the clock (standby loss). A tankless unit has no reservoir: a flow sensor detects water movement, fires the burner, and a heat exchanger brings the water to temperature in the few seconds it takes to pass through — so it never “runs out,” uses no energy when idle, but its output is capped by a maximum flow rate (this unit’s EnergyGuide label references 3.9 GPM under federal test conditions) rather than a stored volume. That flow-rate ceiling is why running several high-demand fixtures at once (e.g., two showers plus a washing machine) is the practical limit to be aware of, not “running out of hot water” in the tank sense.

Softener — ion exchange, briefly: a salt-based softener passes hard water through a resin bed charged with sodium (or potassium) ions; the resin swaps out the calcium and magnesium ions that cause hardness for sodium ions, which don’t form scale. Once the resin’s capacity is used up (tracked here by a metered Clack WS1 valve — i.e. by water use, not a fixed clock), the valve triggers a regeneration cycle, flushing the resin with brine from the brine tank to recharge it and washing the displaced hardness minerals to drain. The gallons-remaining figure on the touch-screen is literally the countdown to that event.

What the re-examination of the photos actually settled. Three claims are now on firm ground. First, both valves are Clack WS1 — the body shape and the blue locking clips on every fitting are unambiguous. Second, the left tank is a metered softener: its home screen exposes the brine cycles (draw, tank refill) that only a regenerating softener has, alongside a gallons-remaining counter, and the brine tank stands right next to it. Third, the right tank runs a day-based (time-clock) program, which the two photographs demonstrate between them: one shows its LCD reading the clock (11:40), the other shows it reading a bare "9". Clack’s own time-clock manual describes exactly that toggle — time of day, or days until the next regeneration — so the "9" is nine days, and the earlier draft’s guess that it might be a flow reading can be retired. A day-scheduled tank with no brine supply of its own is, in ordinary residential practice, a backwashing filter (carbon for taste/odour, or sediment/iron), not a second softener; that inference is strong but not yet proved, because the media is inside a sealed tank.

What the photos cannot settle, and why. Clack sells its valves to hundreds of OEM assemblers who build them onto their own tanks and sell under their own names, so a Clack head identifies the mechanism and says nothing about the brand. Everything an assembler would normally brand is, in this installation, blank: the tanks are plain black composite vessels; the one sticker visible (low on the right tank, in the 2017 photo) is a small two-column label with a corner logo — the shape of a vessel pressure-rating plate rather than a dealer decal — and it is illegible at the resolution available; and the touch-screen’s system-name banner, which an OEM can set to its own product name, reads the factory-generic "Water Treatment". So the honest answer is: the components are identified, the brand of the finished system is not. The one thing that will resolve it without a single label is the telephone icon on the touch-screen home screen — Clack ships its touch-screen package with a dealer information screen behind exactly that icon. See the callout in Specs.

What the house is plumbed with. Framing-stage rough-in photos from the 2017 build (main-floor plumbing before drywall, plus an island/peninsula cabinet base later in the build) settle the distribution material as fact rather than inference: the potable supply runs in PEX (orange hot / blue cold homerun tubing) with blue-handled quarter-turn stop valves at each stub-out, and drainage is ABS/PVC. That matters for two ordinary reasons — PEX is not polybutylene (a common inspection-anxiety question on an older house, moot here), and quarter-turn stops mean every fixture shutoff should operate with a simple twist rather than the many turns (and eventual seizing) of an older multi-turn compression stop.

Oversizing, and what it changes. Per the owner the train is around three times what a household this size needs. Oversizing a softener is not the same as oversizing, say, a furnace — a softener that is too large does not cycle badly or waste energy; it simply travels further between regenerations, using less salt and less regeneration water per gallon of soft water delivered, and holding a large reserve for a house full of guests. The trade-offs are real but mild: more up-front cost and floor space, water sitting longer in the resin bed during light use, and — the one that actually bites — a maintenance rhythm slow enough to forget. A right-sized softener in a busy house reminds you it exists every few weeks when the salt runs low; this one may not remind you for a season. That is the whole reason the Maintenance section is a usage table with a "look at it every N months" column rather than a single line item.

What to gather to finish this page: the touch-screen’s dealer information screen (photograph it — it is the highest-value single item on this page); the tankless heater’s serial number off its underside rating plate; the second tank’s media (carbon / sediment / iron) and therefore what it treats for; a legible macro of the vessel label low on the right tank; the whole-train bypass handle located and labelled; confirmation of the exact salt product name (see the salt-type note in Maintenance); confirmation of a pressure-reducing valve and its setting; the sewer cleanout location; a quick function check of every under-sink shutoff; and confirmation of whether every bathroom’s toilet is the same Gerber Viper model seen on the one delivery pallet photographed. (The main water shutoff photo is now in hand — see Specs.)