But the biggest problems is getting out the tube breaking a 17 year old fitting. You do a job like that leaving enough time to go buy and install a new unit when the corroded threads give way. Or worse.
My plumber told me now it's average life is 8 years (hard for me to believe) when I remember it used to be 13 to 15 years in the past. I wonder if he's telling me the truth or trying to make more sales?
Next logical question is what brand to install. My advice since it happened once to me, make sure you get one with a "metal" faucet not plastic. I once had a 10 year old water heater and suddenly the plastic faucet just cracked and the water was going everywhere it wanted and not in the pan unfortunately. If it matters I got twin "State" gas water heaters recommended by my plumber but I recall hearing other local plumbers recommended another brand around my way. I think I read that different parts of the country also have different recommended brands for that locality. Probably someone around here will know more about this than myself. I am tho going by my recent experience with my hot water heater replacements. Also my house originally had twin 50 gals and like some others said here, my plumber told me I was really only using perhaps 40 outa 50 gals due to the sludge buildup and for economy recommended I replace my twin 50's with twin 40's instead. I have and so far, can't notice the difference in amount of hot water. I think my gas bill is a little cheaper but I'm not 100% sure but it would seem so based on new gas hot water heaters vs. 13 year old ones.
Agreed. Our (electric) tank is also 17 years old (maybe 16) - I had 6ft of breaker bar on the bottom element trying to remove it last year and there's no way it's coming out, and the drain valve (a plastic-bodied piece of sh*t) is also stuck and I expect won't come out without breaking (I wanted to replace it with something that wasn't designed by a 5 year old)
I have a State that I bought from HD. It was just your average conventional one. I did the math and it did not seem worth it in terms of payback to go with one of the more expensive ones with longer warranty, higher efficiency, etc. It's been in about 12 years now I think and it's still fine.
About 5 years ago the thermocouple failed. I called up state, they looked up the warranty and said it was still covered. Two days later I had a new one on my doorstep, no charge, no need to return the old one.
plastic drain valves are designed to work ONCE, to drain the water at end of life......
they are not designed to be opened repeatedly.
to drain sludge out of a tank repeatedly use a ball valve.
all regular valves will get gunk stuck between washer and seat and the small entry area will clog preventing big stuff from passing thru the valve.
say a new tank costs 500 bucks and lasts 10 years. thats 50 bucks cost per year or under a buck a week, not even the cost of a candy bar per week......
water heaters are cheap and tend to be highly reliable.
take the junk one to a scrap yard, where a 100 pounds of scrap metal < TANK> is worth about 10 bucks or more
If they were a one-time deal they'd save a few cents and not fit them at all, instead having a plastic seal that could be smashed to open the tank.
Except when draining the tank in sites that aren't used over winter, or when replacing heating elements.
Exactly. It's a very poor design; the passage through the narrow body is small, not straight, and has an angular cross-section. I'm struggling to think of any way that it could be worse - and yet it seems to be standard on all the tanks I've seen at HD etc.
I'll gladly fit a good valve myself when I eventually buy a new tank, I just wish the tanks cost an extra few $$ and had them as standard. Unfortunately on my ancient one the crappy valve is joined onto a short piece of plastic pipe, which then joins to the tank somewhere on the underside; if I try and remove it, there's a fair chance that it'll be the pipe rather than the valve which fails - which would then mean removing the whole tank to get access so I could fix it. That's more trouble than it's worth (heck, I don't even know if the threads on the tank-side of the plastic pipe are anything standard; there's no reason that they have to be)
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