Here’s a DIY’er tip for you: Your hot water heater has a part in it called a “sacrificial anode”, and you need to replace it every so often. I somehow made it to 2015 without knowing this. It’s job in life is to be easier than the tank walls for the water to eat away. The water in the tank eats away the rod, and doesn’t have much charge left to eat away at the tank walls. As a result, the rod disappears and has to be replaced.
When I learned of it, I went ahead and ordered a replacement and installed it. I wish I could find the picture of the 17 year-old anode I pulled out. There was almost nothing left of it, a couple of inches of magnesium left from a 4 foot rod. That water heater was still working after 22 years. I decided to replace it before tragedy struck. It may have lasted another 10 years or another 10 days or anywhere in between, who knows. Since I replaced the water heater, I pulled the anode out to see how it had fared after 5 years (almost to the week). Here it is:
What Does a 22 Year Old Water Heater Look Like Inside?
Based on the rumbling the tank made when the hot water was used, I pictured huge boulders of accumulated calcium rolling around in the tank. I set out to pop the top of the tank open. It turned out to be more work than it was worth.
Here’s a shot inside the tank from above. The light below is coming in through the drain port. It’s not nearly as bad as I would have thought. I’d never seen the inside of a hot water tank, and you probably neve have either until now. It’s a gas heater, so there’s a tubular heat exhaust vent running up through the center of the tank.
If you own a hot water heater, are considering buying a hot water heater, or for some odd reason are as inexplicably interested in them as I have become, please visit Water Heater Rescue. There you can learn from a true master. That site is the gold standard hot water heater reference.
Installing A Water Pressure Reducing Valve
I hadn’t thought about this before researching a new water heater. Cities provide water to homes at really high pressures so it will reach the farthest homes with acceptable pressure. If you’re close to a pump station, your water pressure may be really high. Water appliance makers advise that high water pressure can reduce the life of your fixtures, including hot water heaters. For that reason, there is a thing on the outside of your house called a water pressure reducing valve. It’s job is to reduce the city water pressure to an acceptable level in your home’s plumbing. Your water pressure reducing valve looks like this:
The thing is, there valves are supposed to be maintained and never are. As a result they silently fail. As the pipes in your house get older, the pressure gets higher as the valve fails. That’s not a good combination – higher pressure in older pipes. I read about this and it made sense, but if you know me you know I have a little skeptical streak. OK, maybe that’s an understatement 🙂
I of course had to find out if this was all true. I ran out and got a water pressure gauge and put it on the hose bib where the city water comes in. Here’s what I found:
The water pressure to my house varied from 85-100 psi over the course of a day. Here’s the problem – the water pressure reducing valve is adjustable from 25 – 75 psi. It can’t even be adjusted this high, so for certain the valve has failed. It is failing to reduce the pressure to anything within it’s limits, so it needs to be replaced or serviced (basically have all of its innards replaced).
So before I installed the new water heater, I installed a new water pressure reducing valve. Once it was in, I turned the water on to bleed the air out of the pipes, and then re-measured the pressure and BAM! – reasonable pressure.
The hot water heater manufacturer recommended a range with 60 psi as the top end, so adjusted it to 60 psi. I wondered if I would notice a drop in pressure when using the sink, tub, or shower. Honestly I haven’t noticed it. I do feel a little better that I’m giving my old pipes a little relief, and maybe it’ll make my new hot water heater last longer than it otherwise would.
Thermal Expansion
So the next problem with home plumbing and water heaters is thermal expansion. Because there is a water pressure reducing valve in the water line, water can not flow backward from your home through that valve back into the city water supply. That’s a good thing for all of us. But, here’s the problem. When the pipes in your home system are full and the water heater heats up the water in its tank, that water expands. The extra volume of water in the tank has to go somewhere. Where does it go? All the pipes are full, there is no more room for it. So what happens is that it goes everywhere in the pipes a little bit, increasing the water pressure in the pipes throughout the house. Again, these pipes are getting older every year, and the higher pressure could be asking for trouble. At some point a pipe will succumb to the pressure and burst. But, if you give the extra volume of water (resulting from heating) a place to go, the pressure in the pipes doesn’t increase. That’s where a thermal expansion tank comes in.
A thermal expansion tank looks like the storage tank an R.O. system uses, maybe there’s one under your kitchen sink. The expansion tank hooks up to your water line. It has what is effectively a balloon in the bottom of it which fills the tank. If the water pressure gets higher than the air pressure in the balloon, water comes into the tank and compresses the balloon down. Here’s a cross section of a thermal expansion tank:
So, you install this inline with your water supply line to your hot water heater. Then, you fill or drain the air pressure in the balloon (bottom of the tank) to be the same as the water pressure level measured outside on the hose bib. I set my water pressure to 60psi, and used an air compressor to set the air pressure in the expansion tank to a matching 60psi. The pressures are now symbiotic, and increases in water pressure will be absorbed by the tank and not the pipes. If you get a thermal expansion tank, use the sizing tool to determine the right size for you. It depends on your water heater capacity, the temperature you like to keep it at, and your water pressure. We like our water heater super hot, so we ended up with the second size up, it holds 3.2 gallons. They say it should be mounted hanging vertically down from the plumbing, supported only by the pipes. I didn’t like that idea, knowing I would be the one installing the pipes. I bought a 1″x 10″ board and made a custom shelf for the tank to sit on. Here it is roughly in place on the upper left – I ultimately ran copper to it, the PEX wasn’t doing it for me. (The green thing is unrelated, I’ll get to that in a minute…)
Lifting a Hot Water Heater By Yourself
I’m getting older. I have had the proverbial back problems. Sadly, I’ve become that guy, although I don’t like admitting it. The new water weighs about 150 pounds. The old one, who knows? I thought it was full of rocks even if I could get it drained. So if you want to make something heavy lighter, you use simple machines. In this case, the pulley. Since game hunters exist, there is a market need for a pulley hoist with gambrel, and they can be found at Harbor Freight for $16.
The $16 includes the wrong directions on how to thread the rope though. If you buy this, don’t run the rope they way it’s shown on the package. Search YouTube and find the deer hunter who shows you how to thread it in there right. Viola, $16 and 4 pulleys later, a 150 pound water heater weighs less than 50 pounds. Far more manageable.
This turned out to be a great way to get the old water heater out and the new one in. If I never use the hoist it again, I got my $16 out of it. I did grab a helper just in case I needed a third hand, but the hoist has a built-in brake, so I could just engage it and put everything on pause before chaos broke out. It went smoothly, and frankly I’m feeling a little smug about my cleverness.
Shipping Plugs are (only) for Shipping
The one mishap I had was to forget that I saw two plugs that came with the new water heater. I bought a water heater that has ports on the side for a hot water circulation pump. I don’t have the pump now, but I want to install one in the future, so I ordered a heater with the ports for it. Sooooo – the assumption at the water heater factory is that I did have the pump and would be installing it. If I didn’t, the onus was on me to use the included plugs to plug the holes. There were plastic shipping plugs in the holes to keep the threads from getting mangled in shipment and handling. Well, a few hours had passed from when I saw the plugs and when I finally was ready to turn the water on. There was no step in the installation manual to remind me to install the real plugs. Not an excuse, just sayin’ it might help to add that in.
So after much soldering and anticipation and a couple more Home Depot trips, I began to fill the new tank and wait for any indication of a leak. It turns out the shipping plugs can hold quite a bit of water in the tank before the fact that they are just plastic shipping plugs cannot be belied any more, and they burst forth from the side of the tank, expelling the contents of the tank onto the floor. “Oh yeah, I saw those plugs” was all I could think as I watched the garage fill with water. It was pretty spectacular, the water shot probably 5 feet in the air across the garage. This is the last of it after I managed to climb down from the step ladder and get my phone out.
Minimizing Future Water Damage
One of those dark feelings in the back of my mind is one of a water pipe breaking while I’m away and water just continuing to flood in indefinitely forever until I get home hours or days later. If that thought has never crossed your mind, well bless your heart. If that’s happened to you, how horrifying!
I found this device which detects a water leak and shuts the water supply off when it does. Sold. Done. You had me at electrically-operated-water-valve-with-a-sensor. I feverishly clicked ‘Add to Cart’.
As it turns out, I like it…but. It’s very cool and simple. There’s an electrically operated valve (it can also be operated manually if needed) which connects in line with your water supply. This is connected to a control box, which is in turn connected to a water sensor PCB which sits at the base of your water heater (or other potential flood zone). The control box can be powered by 4 AA batteries and/or plugged into the wall via included transformer.
I don’t trust myself to check and change the batteries, so I installed an electrical outlet to plug the control box into. I used a GFI outlet of course, because it’s in the garage (and near water pipes that I worked on). We have underground power lines, and don’t see many power failures – maybe once a year? I’m not worried about the battery backup.
I installed and tested it, it works great. My only challenge is that the metal pan the water heater sits in tends to trip the sensor board since both metal and water conduct electricity. I put the sensor on a cloth to solve the issue. If there’s a problem, the board will be quickly fully submerged, so the cloth won’t be a hindrance in tripping the valve.
As I read the instructions for the device, there were instructions for models which connected to your Wi-Fi. I can’t believe I missed that. I would totally have bought the Wi-Fi capable model. It will text or email you when it gets tripped. Then you can panic immediately wherever you are until you get home, instead of naively waiting until you get home to panic.
Here’s the ‘but’ – I looked up the Wi-Fi model and it’s about $150 more. There’s no way in this day and age that Wi-Fi is a $150 feature, or even a $50 feature. So then I looked up solenoid operated water valves and find they are in the $30 range. This thing cost around $200. On one hand, I know I can make one of these myself for under $100, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if I like. It’s a little frustrating to pay so much for something I could make myself on the cheap. On the other hand, it’s a done deal and making one would have taken me a week or two more, squeezed in between everything else. It’s in and I have a little more peace of mind. I’m resisting the urge to put one on the main supply to the whole house.
I Did My Homework, You Can Copy It
I did a ton of research into water heaters and all kinds of related plumbing topics and products. I spent years mulling and weeks really digging into the right way to replace water heater. I wasn’t going to listen to a plumber tell me about something I didn’t know about or understand. I wanted to know my stuff. My neighbor got sold a tankless water heater for $5000 the day before I put this in. That wasn’t going to be me.
I can tell you that plumbers have access to better quality water heaters than you can buy at Home Depot and Lowes. The manufacturers make good/better/best lineups just every other industry. The good are at big box retail. The better and best are professional. But you can order them too. And you can probably find a plumber to install it for you. At least that way you get to choose the product you want, instead of what’s being pushed. Water heater manufacturers have programs that pay installers to install their products. Here’s the sticker that came on my hot water heater:
There’s nothing wrong with that. And I’m not saying plumbers just install the product that pays them the most. Some might, and some certainly don’t. I don’t know which are which though. And just because this guy likes Rheem, that doesn’t mean the Rheem model he’s suggesting has everything I want. I just want to make my buying decision on the criteria that are important to me. I want brass fittings, not plastic. I want a high first-hour-gallons rating. I don’t care about Energy Star rated, they’ve changed the standards and hot water heaters have to under-perform to meet them. I don’t need California’s ultra-low Nox ratings. Etc, etc, etc.
So I did my homework and got the heater I wanted. I suggest you do the same for yourself. If you want to copy my homework though, I recommend AO Smith since even their low-end models use brass fittings. And get a 6 year warranty (or longer), not the entry level 4 year warranty. Once you determine capacity, size based on your available space (tall/skinny or short/fat), electric or gas, and venting type if gas, then you’re choices get limited down pretty quickly. I didn’t go for the new electric venting stuff. I like the attitude at Water Heater Rescue (linked above) that electric vents are just more things that can fail. And using the same vent type as the original saved me a lot of work. I bought the water heater, Taco Leakbreaker, and Term-X-Trol expansion tank at SupplyHouse.com. The whole process was as smooth as butter, including them arranging (free!) truck delivery with a lift gate to deliver the heater.
I’m loving the new water heater. The water hotter, it’s hotter longer, it’s quieter, and I did it. I hope it’s another 22 years before this one gets the boot.