I bought this sensor a little over a two years ago and installed. My water heater stopped last week with light blinking showing needing to replace again. I am 71 and hardest part for replacing this item is getting down on floor for me. Also note that the sensor snaps into the plastic collar from the front not the back. Pull the old sensor out and unplug two small wires and plug wire into new sensor and snap the unit back in hole. As the other people said.....The hack is turning off hot water and unplug for a few minutes. Then plug in and turn on the hot water heater and quickly go back and forth turned the temp knob between low and high 7 times. You can hear it click on. I was able to get the hot water heater to work for a few weeks by doing this hack every few days. Until it wouldnt restart and stay on. Very important ....I did have to do the hack to get the new sensor to work as just turning on did not work. Hope this helps.

Good part

Product works. Try and reset the water heater first. No, it's not just unplugging it. My problem was just that, a hard reset.

Part went right in reset by turning power off than on, than turning the temp to off than high 7 times in a row... Works perfect. Thank you..

Cup of H2O is a great short term fix while your sensor is on order.

Works great

This replacement, Rheem SP20172 Flammable Vapor FV Sensor Kit was easy to install. Very reasonable price as well, and I received it a couple of days earlier than expected.

It worked

If you have diagnosed that your Rheem Flammable Vapor FV Sensor is the issue, this is an easy to install and easy for for anyone! Save yourself the expensive service call to a water heater technician and install this yourself. Check out a YouTube video and you'll have your water heater working in 10 minutes.

If you're here looking to buy a replacement Flammable Vapor Sensor I would advise you to buy TWO. Install one and tape the other to the side of your water heater for future use. It's a cheap insurance policy. As you may have already found out these are hard to find and many heating companies don't sell the part (they want to charge you for a service call and installation labor which takes about 5 minutes). You could easily pay $150.

Bought this after Beacon Plumbing in Seattle tried to charge me $1,400 to install it for me. Told the guy to stick it and order this and did it myself the next day.

Perfect

Fixed our issue, easy enough repair after Google searches. We are finishing our basement and have painted trim work. The sprayed enamel paint tripped the Flammable Vapor Sensor on our AO Smith water heater. No reset methodology would work (I even pulled the sensor and moved it do a different part of the house overnight). Ordered this replacement part on a Saturday and had it Monday before noon. Part did what it was supposed to, water heater is up and running again. It's an easy replacement and certainly a do it yourself vs. calling a repair person who will likely charge you $150 just for showing up on a $25 part.The downside of these are - you need the one you need, there aren't really “options”. If yours dies you need a new one. They're finicky, as I said mine wouldn't reset and I read a lot of people having issues with these and their durability / reliability. It's almost worth having a spare on hand (though if you google right you can find some temporary bypass solutions). $23 is the cheapest I could find this part which is really probably a $3 resistor at best. Crazy price for a cheap part, but it is what it is and this one does the job. Certainly don't need to pay $50-$70 for other versions of this.

Works as described. Saved the day repair man was a couple weeks out.

5 stars

Very nice

This vapor sensor worked for my water heater.

Thank you, we installed this part to our Rheem water heater, and it works well.

Works with ao smith / honywell.

This product is excellent and appears to be OEM. Before I got this in the mail I used the vapor sensor modification (video can be found on youtube) where you disassemble the sensor and use a lead pencil to get the correct resistance and reset your heater as a short term fix. Once this was installed and the Honeywell control unit was reset (with the multiple rapid low to high settings rotating the dial back and forth) everything has worked perfectly.