What actually fails on a tankless in Kannapolis
Tankless units tell you what is wrong if you read them. Nearly every call starts with an error code, and the code plus the gas supply narrows it down long before anyone needs to open anything.
The local variable is the water. Yours comes from the City of Kannapolis. Where that supply is soft, scale is a slower problem here than the national troubleshooting guides assume, which means a unit throwing a temperature fault in Kannapolis is more often a flow sensor, an igniter or a gas supply problem than the limescale everyone reaches for first.
- Ignition and flame failure codes: gas supply, igniter or flame rod before anything more expensive.
- Cold water sandwich: usually a behaviour of the system rather than a fault, and worth explaining before selling you a fix.
- Flow sensor faults: common, cheap, and frequently misdiagnosed as a failing exchanger.
- Heat exchanger: the one genuinely terminal failure, and often still under a long manufacturer warranty. We check the serial before quoting.

What Kannapolis itself changes
Where the heaters sit
The mill village housing is crawlspace-dominant with genuinely restricted clearances, and we quote that access before the visit. The post-2000 subdivisions are straightforward garage and closet installs.
The housing in Kannapolis
Kannapolis is a genuine mill-village barbell with real income behind it. 29.7% of the housing predates 1960, concentrated in the former Cannon Mills village, while 40.7% was built in 2000 or later in the newer subdivisions. Two very different jobs in one town: old tanks in old houses with tight access, and second-cycle replacements in modern garages.