What we check before a used hot water machine goes on the floor.

Buying used is the right call more often than this industry likes to admit. The problem is that most used machines are sold by people with no ability to assess them and no reason to tell you what they found.

The checks that matter most

1. Run it under loadNot at idle. A machine will start and idle beautifully with a failing unloader, a scaled coil, and worn packings. Open a gun and watch it work for several minutes.
2. Measure PSI and GPM against the plateA machine that has drifted well below its rating is telling you about the pump. Trust the gauge, not the sticker.
3. Look at the coil on hot water unitsScale inside a coil is expensive and invisible from outside. Ask when it was last descaled and be skeptical of a confident answer with nothing behind it.
4. Check for weeping at the manifoldWater there means packings. Not a dealbreaker — a rebuild kit and an afternoon — but it should come off the price.
5. Match the hours to the wearLow hours on a machine that looks beaten is either a replaced hour meter or a hard life. Either way you now have a question to ask.

What we do with what we find

We fix it and we write it down. Every used machine on our floor lists what we found and what we replaced, because that disclosure is the only thing that makes buying used from a dealer meaningfully different from buying it off a classified listing.