Raypak 336,000 BTU Digital Electronic Ignition Natural Gas Pool Heater

Worked as advertised. I replaced my 20 year old heater and saved a lot of money doing it myself. If you can install a gas dryer you can install a pool heater - a little more wiring though but very easy for a handy guy/gal.

Did the install myself, Really straightforward

It has been about a year and a half since I installed this Raypak, a replacement for an old one that had lasted 10 years. I wanted to wait to write this review to see how the new one would hold up. It worked fine for a year and a half and now has a temperature sensor issue (or a main board issue, not sure yet). It is reading the water temperature as 102F (its closer to 75F). The old unit, also a 266A, had to have the sensor replaced twice in 10 years...so I was hoping for at least 5 years out of this one. The up side is the sensor is not expensive and easy to replace. The down side is the Raypak warranty is not likely to pay for it even though it is within the warranty period. For me it is because I installed the heater myself (they require a tech to install it for warranty coverage). The temp sensor, however, is installed at the factory... so it makes no difference if the heater was installed by rabbits or a service tech. The temp sensor was not affected by the installtion of the heater. If it was not that reason, I have read that they like to say your water is not perfectly balanced and that caused the sensor to fail. Unless your water was so unbalanced it corroded away the sensor that does not make sense either. Anyway, once Rayvak declines my warranty I will buy another sensor. Just be aware that if you purchase this heater, you prob will also be buying sensors ...which is too bad because I otherwise really like the unit. If they happen to stand behind the warranty I will revise this review to say so and give them credit.

A great buy that totaled under $3700! I had serious reservations about buying this through Amazon or any online seller due to bad reviews on shipping damage. This was not the case for me. It was delivered beautifully, box looked new and was anchored very securely to a nice wooden pallet. The driver used a power pallet jack to take it down my side hill to my backyard—> a little 💵 helped. As for the heater…it’s working now that I fixed the wiring my hired contractor did 🙄. I felt bad having to hire someone to install this heater knowing exactly how to do it, but because of the awkward location, weight of units (old and new) and difficulty maneuvering a hilly river rock terrain, I thought hiring someone with more help would be a smarter option….and overall was, but still?? So far, the heater is working great! Overall, I’m happy with the results of this purchase. I’d recommend this purchase to anyone looking.

My existing pool heater was an older Raypak model for which the electronics, burner tray and heat-exchange chamber had all become dysfunctional. Parts are too expensive, so I bought this new one. Local pool-service outfits wouldn't install the unit for me, so I had to do it myself. The main worry was that this new one could be installed without having to reconfigure the electrical connections, the natural gas line or the pool-water inflow & outflow pipes. Bingo! It worked fine. I took note of the existing electrical connections and carefully duplicated them in the new unit. The existing water pipes and fittings mated perfectly with the new unit. The unit weighs over 200 lbs and I asked my son to help me jockey it into place. Otherwise, this was a one-person job. (But you'll have to find your own son to help...)

We've had this installed for a few months now and love it. It replaced a 17 yr old Jandy 250k BTU heater. We use an iLink controller to operate the Raypak heater from a phone app, but it can also easily be manually operated using the heater's control panel. Be aware that no matter what brand of heater you buy, pool heaters are just fairly high maintenance items and will need repair from time to time. Also be aware that all the major manufacturers of pool heaters have lacking customer service, will likely try to avoid having to honor their warranty, etc. If you research reviews over time, this certainly applies to Raypak as well. But as a DIY handyman when the time comes for repairs, what I like about Raypak vs other major mfgrs is Raypak heaters are easier to work on (i.e. most components likely to fail such as safety sensors are easy to get to and troubleshoot w/o major disassembly) and Raypak parts are more readily available to the public. I deducted one star for a few reasons: 1. On the first attempted use after the install, water was pouring out from within. Turned out to be a threaded plastic pipe plug (the heat exchanger drain plug) had it's square head broken off. That plug is inside the outer shell and only accessible through a small access hole after you remove the cover from that hole. There was not a single scratch or dent in the outer shell (or in the shipping box it came in), so the head of that pipe plug could not have been broken during transit or during our installation. Because of it's internal location and lack of any external damage, it had to have been broken as the heat exchanger was being installed during manufacturing and perhaps accidentally dropped or at least was handled too roughly and carelessly. 2. While trying to determine where all the water was escaping, I also found several screws just laying on top of the heat exchanger. They appeared to be screws that an assembly worker dropped and just didn't bother to retrieve. I doubt they would have ever caused a problem, but the sloppiness of dropping screws without retrieving them, along with carelessly breaking off the square head of the drain plug while installing the heat exchanger, makes me wonder what else may have been sloppily done, coupled with obviously a lack of quality control inspecting and testing. 3. I installed the heater myself, and the mfgr makes it clear that if you don't use a professional installer, the warranty is void. I'm very qualified to install this item (I often have to troubleshoot and fix errors made by the "pros"), but I don't own or work for a pool equipment company. So they can deny warranty even on issues that clearly aren't your fault, such as in this case when there was an internal broken part but no external damage. To be fair, I didn't try to get them to supply a replacement part under warranty because the plastic plug was ready available at a petty cost, but I have read other reviews where they denied warranty in cases where the issue couldn't have been from a faulty installation. And also to fair, other manufacturers seem to have similar loophole policies to allow them to escape having to provide any warranty. But just because others are doing it doesn't make it right to use a installation loophole hole clause to deny warranty on issues not possibly related to installation. I debated only giving Raypak 3 stars, but I don't think any other pool heater manufacturer desires more than 3 stars either.