House Bill 6395 Small Hot Water Heaters Proposes Reducing Regulatory Burden

There isn’t one big fix for the challenges we often face in State government. There are thousands of small process improvements, structural changes, and statutory and regulatory updates we can make to move our state forward – one step at a time. Each small step is part of the bigger picture. That leads me to one of our bills here at DAS – House Bill 6395. 

At the Office of the State Building Inspector, we’re proposing this bill to reduce the regulatory burden on those installing small hot water heaters in the state of Connecticut.

Small point of use water heaters are used for installations in limited spaces including under counters, sinks or any remote area where modest quantities of hot water are required. There are hundreds of these small water heaters in use in schools, daycare centers, public and private hospitals, nursing and boarding homes, churches, and public buildings. They’re convenient and helpful, and their safe installation should fulfill sufficient requirements – not duplicative requirements like we have today. Today, these small hot waters are inspected twice – both by the boiler inspectors and by the building inspectors.

In addition to the inspections, these units are already tested and listed by independent agencies, such as the Underwriters Laboratory, and when installed and maintained to code do not present a safety risk to the public. Model code language recognizes this and exempts these units from certification under the national boiler safety standards.

This proposal makes the exemption explicit in the statute to align the Connecticut boiler safety code with the national standards.

While this may be considered a small change in how we do business, it is still a step towards reducing redundancy in state government. We look forward to working with legislators and others to make this a reality – and to continue our work to streamline State efforts in the future.