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Since we're talking about water heaters

this makes me want to ask a question. In Lexington, we have moderately hard water (they say) and I do not have a water softener. To me, the water here is VERY hard, not just moderately hard....But that said, there is no sediment at all in my toilet tanks after ten plus years. Like I said, I've never drained the hot water heater in 10 plus years. So I wonder, since it's never been drained, would draining it cause problems because of all of the muck that must be in there by now? I've seen the inside of hot water heaters online that were half full of hardened minerals and I'm trying to figure out how would that go through the hose you're using to drain it. I may do this sometime soon. I know the water needs to be turned off and a few things need to be done before you turn the water heater back on. Things like this intimidate me. Anything with plumbing and electricity.....
 
Mark,

Put a hose on the drain valve, open it and run some water into a bucket. See if you get sediment. If you do, turn off the burner or breaker, depending if you have gas or electric. Run water out until the sediment quits coming out or slows down. If you want to do a more thorough cleaning of the tank, proceed as follows.

Shut off the water supply to the w/h on the cold side. There should be a valve on the cold water supply to the heater. It should be a gate valve. If it's not it might be a stem valve with knob. If it's a gate valve and it seems stuck, put some penetrating oil on it (like PB Blaster). If it's a stem valve, clean away any corrosion from the stem with some light sandpaper or a brass brush. Get the stem as clean as possible. If the valve doesn't want to turn put some penetrating oil on the stem where it meets the packing nut. Let it soak. Then put some plumbers grease on the stem and try and turn the valve off. You may want to support the pipe if it doesn't want to turn. Don't want any broken fittings. Open the T&P valve on top of the heater or another hot water faucet in the house, like the bath tub or other high volume faucet. If your T&P valve hasn't been opened before it maybe stuck shut or may leak when you close it and try to refill the tank. T&P valves should be checked every year or two to be sure they are working. A stuck T&P valve can turn your w/h into a rocket if the thermostat malfunctions, although this doesn't usually happen. The most likely thing is that they start to leak. Drain all the water out of the heater with the hose. If you go outside and down hill it will go faster.

After the tank is drained, close the T&P valve or other hot water faucet you have opened. Then turn the cold water supply valve to the w/h back on all the way while leaving the drain valve at the bottom of the heater open. The water will rush into the tank and stir up/ dislodge sediment in the tank bottom and should flush it out. If the dip tube is still in good condition this will be more affective. The dip tube shoots the water out at the bottom of the tank for more affective heating of the water. The cold water is released at the bottom of the tank where it is heated and the hot water is drawn off the top of the tank. If there is a lot of sediment you may have to do this several times and over a period of several weeks or months. You'll get tired of doing it after awhile. Also, depending on what type of drain valve is on your tank it may become plugged during your flushing process. In that case you can blow through the valve during the empty tank part of the cycle or you can hook a hose up to the valve and force water back through the valve from another faucet such as an outdoor hydrant.

As I've referred to before, waterheaterrescue.com is your best source of information. Good luck.

B.

p.s. If your dip tube is shot that's a more in depth repair.
 
I checked the 2 articles briefly. Actually the most intriguing bit was the mention of a gas water heater that used 2 D-cell batteries to run the thermostat and igniter.

First of all, pilot lights in a furnace and pilot lights in water heaters are not remotely comparable. A pilot light running in a furnace that goes unused IS wasting gas. A pilot light in a water heater is HEATING THE WATER. Outside of discussion as to what % of a home's hot water needs can be satisfied by the pilot alone, this point is totally ignored. That alone is a major red flag in terms of the reliability of an information source.

Kenmoreguy89 has a couple of good points. A few factoids I've read over the years have made me go hmmmmmmmm.......

-most homes in Florida had their hot water and heating needs taken care of by solar until the late 1920's when the gas companies came in and paid people to switch to gas.
-the photoelectric solar cell was invented in around 1912 and went nowhere fast due to lack of investment.
-likewise, very little R&D funding went into batteries from the time they were first used in cars before 1900 until recently. Gee, I wonder why.....
-Germany averages a good bit less sunlight yearly than the U.S. does, yet they get a good bit more of their energy needs met by solar. How? why?
-Corn is one of the least efficient plants to use to produce alcohol for vehicle fuel. So why is it the most used here in the U.S.?

Failure to address these issues simply draws more attention to them...
 
While I agree that conservation is a wise move I don't quite buy the numbers in the links regarding the monthly costs.

 

I have a natural gas home.  I use gas to dry clothes, gas cooktop, gas water heater, gas furnace, gas logs  and outdoor nat. gas grill.  My water heater has a pilot, the rest do not.  Yet in the summer my gas bill drops to ~$22.  I do not stop cooking, I add grilling and I take long HOT showers everyday, my wh is set as high as it will go.  Either I have a considerably lower gas rate than the person who wrote the blog, or his numbers are off.

 

In the past I would have easily sided with the government on issues such as this, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), an organization responsible for providing Congress with authoritative and unbiased reports on a wide range of present and emerging issues in science and technology was an honest source of information.  But it was killed by the R's years ago.  And I have zero trust in any corporation to do anything that is in my interest, they only care about their bottom line, so I feel stuck.  At this point I'll lean to govt. regulation to some extent, god knows corporation will never do anything on their own to improve the environment.  We're in a rock and a hard place situation.
 
You can still purchase gas furnaces with a standing pilot light. They are lower rated for energy efficiency. I believe these are the ones that you can still have attached to a chimney versus direct vent. A gas log pilot light uses about $20.00 per month with our current gas rates here. I wonder if they have new gas water heaters with a standing pilot light that have lower energy rating also?

jon
 
#61 and......

You know why corn is grown for fuel in US. Starting with Monsanto, through Archer-Daniels-Midland and Cargill, to Corn Processors Association. All lobbying the shirt out of congress.

Smog? Well yeah, ethanol reduces CO but it raises NOx, a bigger component of smog. But thanks to EPA, ethanol is mandated anywhere air quality ever exceeds setpoint. Ethanol is 15% less energetic than the petro it displaces. Which means you burn more for the same distance traveled. Which gives off MORE CO2 (greenhouse), not less. And costs more, which of course goes directly into the coffers of Monsanto et al.

We're just supposed to forget that it takes more fossil fuel to produce ethanol than it yields when burned. And the cropland diverted to fuel corn raises the price of all food crops except rice. So don't DARE try to tell me the g'mnt is operating on a green basis, other than the color of MONEY donated to reelection. You know better than that.
 
I remember the day the OTA closed. I used to walk by their offices in an office building on Pennsylvania Ave. at lunch time. Nobody with a brain could imagine that important office being defunded, but it was. Inconvenient truth is TMI in politics.

A couple of years ago when I was doing research on a new water heater, I noticed that there were models made for places with poor air quality and they did not have standing pilots to help reduce NOx emissions.

I must say that the thermistor in my power vent gas water heater is still very responsive. In my older thermocouple tanks, the thermostat would develop the huge lag between cycle on and cycle off that Phil spoke about. Sometimes the only way to get the water hot enough to run the dishsmasher was to open a hot tap to admit cold to the tank until the burner came on and heated the water from 120F up to the hot setting of 140F.

A friend just had her water heater replaced and the plumber added a thermal expansion tank to the cold line. That might be code now also.
 
Thermal Expansion Tank

Tom,

Not sure if its code but it is likely a good idea in many cases. Plumbing codes are often pretty variable due to county, state and regional rules.

Many water meters today have back-flow prevention built in so expanding water has no where to go. This is also the case if you have a pressure reducing regulator at the meter. As the water heats system pressures can increase, sometimes the temp/pressure relief on the WH will leak or burp off the excess. The external tank provides a cushion for the entire system and may prevent failures.

The added cushion also helps prevent surge induced hammer and temperature variations at faucets and showers too.

My Whirlpool branded 40 gallon tank makes snapping noises when the water pressure jumps around. It was due to the size of the tank changing slightly and the parting line of the outer steel shell binding on itself!
 
Like a new car, 1st generations high efficiency condensing water heater has problems and I will for go and buy a standard Rheem unit with Wi-Fi.
I would love the long turn savings but there are bugs that need to be worked out for a new major appliance!
 
Auntie Em, Auntie Em, there is a gray tornado snaking out of the water heater.

Phil & Hans, I watched a This Old House where someone had a dribbling water heater and it was for the reason you explained. An expansion tank was installed in the cold feed as a remedy.
 
If you have watched the movie, Day after Tomorrow, you have seen that we are preparing for any number of climate anomalies because of warming. Arctic thawing at present is causing loss of stability of the Polar Vortex which holds the cold winds in a path around the pole. As ice has melted, the cold winds are dropping out of polar circulation and falling down over the eastern United States which was the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere this past winter.

The more serious threat, which I hope we do not live to see, is if the melting glaciers, which are made of fresh water, dilute the salinity of the oceans to the extent that the thermohaline conveyor stops and there is no longer a delivery of warm water to the northern Atlantic Ocean. Then the northern latitudes freeze up and we have another ice age. Maybe that is what you are thinking of.
 
ok just wanted to get up to date

First, we're all gonna freeze to death.

Second, we're all gonna burn up or the planet will become a 2nd Venus.

Now, we're not gonna burn up or freeze, but somehow we're all gonna suffer greatly unless taxes are raised, expensive new standards are put in place, and all of us figure out how to pay more (and invaribly get less)to save good old mother earth.

Sorry, I'm not buying into any of this.
 
No thank you,

I will continue to use my oil furnace, and if I want a pilot light gas stove and water heater, I don't buy anything the GV says, they banned Freon 12 when Jets pollute the atmosphere much more, its all about selling and money.Guess what I did last night!!! I burned a big brush pile, you can still do that here!!!!
 

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