Since my previous owner decided to perch the hot water heater on this unsafe contraption involving 3 on end cinder blocks (of different manufacture and style I might add) holding up a circular concrete pad (paving block probably). It does not look safe at all, nor do I want to keep it. I think it meets code though, since the water heater is nominally 18" off the floor of the garage.
I looked around the web some and didn't really find any good examples of what people put their gas heaters on to keep them 18" off the floor. Taking a leaf from my engineering days (oh boy!) I decided that placing it on 2 cinderblock stacks should suffice - a ciderblock is 8x8x16 and that should give me 16" + the concrete pad which is about 2", plus the water heater itself has a 2" air intake foot under the pilot light. So I'm looking at 2 rows of 3 cinderblocks stacked on each other (12 total cinderblocks) plus the pad as my water heater stand.
What's normally done here. I was fully expecting to find a pretty standard water heater stand - but I'm not pulling anything up.