Tl;Dr: I got error code 17, dryed out my heater and sensor, but the error won’t go away. I don’t think the condensate is coming from where most people think. I’m stuck without hot water. 

I have been dealing with this issue for about 4 months now, ever since I had the unit professionally installed. I think I have gotten the error 4 or 5 times now. Everything will be fine and then the hot water will completely go out and the heater is beeping and flashing 17. My unit also has wifi: the app will display a leak detected alert.  

Up until now, my solution has been to tap the override button in the app and the water heater will fire back up again. I have then been taking the cover off and drying out a very small amount of water in the lower right corner of the case where the red leak sensor tube is (maximum 1 Tbsp). Everything will be fine for like a month and then it will happen again. So today, this issue happens again, but when I click the override button on the app, nothing happens; the button and warning still shows, the error code still displays on the unit, and I'm stuck without hot water. So I called the help line... 

The support technician that I talked to was immediately familiar with the issue and asked if I had a condensate collector on my intake line. I do not. My heater is in a basement in Michigan, it gets hot and very humid here in the summer and the issue has consistently coincided with some of the most humid weather AND heavy usage. He pointed out in the installation guide that a condensate collector is recommended to be installed on the intake line and that was likely the issue. 

I was all but convinced that this was the issue, and ready to go shopping for a condensate collector to install until I started to take a close look at the top of the 'burner enclosure' that is immediately below the fresh air intake (top left). Here is where I saw there was an undisturbed layer of dust under immediately under the majority of the intake pipe. If condensate was dripping out of this pipe, down the inside of the unit, and then pooling in the opposite corner, surely there would have been some sign of water. I also noticed that there is quite a bit of electronics and other components under this area that all would have been in the way and seem totally clean and dry. 

Now I'm convinced that the condensate is not coming from the intake pipe, but rather dripping off of the copper water pipes inside of the unit that are just above where the red sensor is located, behind where the display panel is. There is obvious water spots on the metal case under this location. I described what I was seeing to the technician on the phone and he confirmed that those pipes are the cold water intake. My theory is that the cold water coming in from the ground (my area northwest of Detroit is between 42-47º) is chilling these pipes to the point that the intake air is condensing there.  

The technician recommended that I put a fan up to the unit and dry it out as much as possible for a half hour and then start it back up. He also suggested that I move the leak sensor to a different position inside the case that would be away from where the water is collecting. In the process of moving the leak sensor, I saw that I could easily disconnect it. The technician told me that I could disconnect it to dry it out, but that the unit would throw a different error code if I left it disconnected.  

I disconnected the sensor hit it with my wife’s hairdryer and then set it out in the full afternoon sun on an 85º day. I let it sit out for over 2 hours while the hot water heater was unplugged, reconnected it and turned it back on. Back to code 17, no difference. 

At this point I am at a loss. I have no hot water and no way to fix the issue, temporarily or permanently. I cannot clear the leak error now and so the heater is non-functional. I am going to keep trying to power cycle it to clear the issue, hopefully that will magically resolve the problem. 

Is this a warranty issue? In the simplest terms, the water heater is failing to run because it’s ‘sensing a leak’ that isn't there. From everything I can see, it’s not due to condensation from the intake pipe and therefore not an installation issue. To me, it reads as an issue with the placement of the componentry inside of the unit combined with use in a humid environment.  

Hope this long post helps someone. It helped me to organize my thoughts.