Electric code

[gfretwell]

One advantage to having my water heater outside although I doubt that works up in the frozen north.

[Ralph Mowery]

Mu water heater problem is over. Got a call about 8:30 this morning and the local plumbing company said two men were on the way. They had to pick up a heater. I cut the power, unwired the heater and started draining it. The heater is about a foot or two below ground level so could not get all the water out as I used a hose pipe to send the water out to the yard so they would not have a muddy mess to work in. They hooked a small pump to it and finished the draining.

Wired the heater up without a disconnect. I was told yesterday by the plumber that around here if it is an old instalation and has 2 hot wires and no ground wire a new wire would have to be ran. As my heater had two hot wires and a bare ground wire they could put it back as found.

Anyway I was charged for 2 hours labor (total $ 200) as they wree here about an hour and a half, maybe less. To me it is worth $ 200 to have the job done. That included hauling off the old heater. I have a truck ,so could have picked one up and hauled the old one off about 15 miles away.

The total for everything was about $ 950 which seemed fair to me as the Heater was almost $ 600, a 40 gallon Rheem. That is what the old one was and don't know how old it ws as it was here when i bought the house about 15 years ago. and they listed the parts used to put it in. Sure beats that $ 1700 Benjamin Franklin wanted. I knew at that price I was being ripped off.

[Ralph Mowery]

This replacement is going to take a little while. About 2 feet over the heater is copper pipe. From there it goes to pvc or cpvc. Every thing is glued in, no unions or cut off valves for the heater. I am sure the heater will be a different brand.

Years ago at another house I replaced a gas heater. Not much to it. Easy to get to and some valves. I used two pieces of some copper pipe that is corragated ( whatever you call it) to make it flexable to do the water connections. Much younger and broke then.

Now much older and I don't mind a reasonable 2 or 3 hundred for labor just so I don't have to deal with the headach. It may go smooth ,or it may require 2 or 3 trips for me to pick up parts from the store 10 miles away. Hopefully the plumber will have the needed parts on his truck.

[trader_4]

Sounds like a good deal to me.

[Ralph Mowery]

I figuer at my age it is well worth $ 200 not to have to deal with the heater. I changed out a gas heater many years ago, but it was at the end of the carport in what I call a utiility room with the washer and dryer. The carport was enclosed so it stayed warmer in there, plus it is in the middle of NC so no extreamly cold weather and not long at a time. Those two guys did more in less than 2 hours than I could have all day counting getting the heater, then carting it off and probably several 10 mile trips to get needed parts.

[micky]

It's hard to remember but I thinnk I cut mine into 3 pieces while in the basement. It was worth it because I wanted to see how it was made inside, but it wouldn't be worth it again.

Also, I have a tray under the WH and a pipe that goes to the sump/pump, but I guess I could have ladled the water out if I were smart enough to cut not far above the water level.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

That's what I have here, and it wasn't changed when I got a new furnace

6 years ago.

BTW, one thing I did wonder about, was the (gas) furnace has a fan in the exhaust.

[Scott Lurndal]

Probably a draft inducer.

[Ralph Mowery]

The bottom of my heater was about a foot or so below grade. I hooked a hose to it and drained most of the water to the yard. The plumbers had a very small pump they hooked up and pumped out maybe the last 10 to 20 % of the water.

I have a sump pump about the size if a galon of milk jug and thought about putting a pan under the tank drain and doing it that way. But after looking it over , the plastic pans I have would not fit.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Yeah, but they have a big ad in the Yellow Pages. They advertise on TV and their workers look very professional on TV. You don't want to pay the extra $800 for that?

[Ralph Mowery]

I much perfer the ones that showed up in an ummarked pickup (clean relative new) and had 'Don and Jon Surf Shop' on his T shirt. The other one had a plain grey T shirt. They were clean looking and very nice. They charged $ 800 less.

[Clare Snyder]

They are "re-interpreting" it - allowing a "dedicated" twist lock plug meet the definition of a "disconnect". Around here, anyway, I've never heard of a standard NEMA 5 15P passing.An L5-15P has been known to be passed.

[Clare Snyder]

First time I changed mine I cut the copper and soldered in a shut-off valve and a pair of unions. Put a union in the gas line too - about 10 inches from the pilot valve. Takles less than 10 minutes to remove it now - not counting draining it - and the "pony" pump handles about 360 GPH - so it's less than 10 minutes to drain it. Swapping the pipe fittings takes another 15 minutes if I have to look for my wrenches and sealant. The rest of the job is just grunt work moving the old one out and the new one in - - - -

[Clare Snyder]

Forced draft - on all mid-high efficiency furnaces. On a high efficiency the flue gas is too cold to initiate a draft in the chimney

- and most now just use a plastic vent pipe to the outside - along with a plastic fresh air intake for the sealed burner.

[micky]

A pump. Never thought of that.

None of this applies ehre but years ago I bought a pump that runs off an electric drill -- figured it might come in handy sometime -- and when my sewer backed up I tried to use it to pump out the totally full laundry sink through a fairly short hose and then to a longer hose 25 feet to the sump. IIRC, ti didnt' work. Maybe I coudln't get it started. Ended up waiting until the stream receded and let the sink drain via it's own drain pipe.

[micky]

I have the tray under the WH after a previous wh sprang a leak and watered the whole floor. Then I had to run a 2" plastic pipe from the tray to the sump with a 45^ and 90^ turn in it. It was pretty easy and could have been a lot more complicated.

By the way, the pump in hte previous answer is half the size of a fist.

[gfretwell]

That doesn't affect the code issues at all.

[micky]

When I replaced my WH the first time, I managed to find the same brand, AOSmith, just by looking in the phone book.

But after that I couldn't and I went to a bunch of places to find one that was the same, even under a different brand. Mostly all I did is measure the distance between intake and output pipes. Ended up at Sears, where the distance was the same.

This is all because I didn't want a funny looking zigzag pipe going up from the WH and they didn't make or I didnt' want flexible pipe. But I'm glad I wwent to the trouble because it looked nice. IIRC sears is gone and I dont' know where I'll get the next WH.

But Sears had one with the very same dimensions, pipe locations and the controls in front seem the same.

It was easy enough to put it on the rear seat and trunk of my convertible, with some cotton clothes line holding it in place.

Easy enough to rock it down the stairs one step at a time.

Someone harder to connect the pipes, because I'm so compulsive, I only left a quarter inch of empty space beween the stubs of the pipes attached to the ceiling and stubs of the pipes that screw into the WH.

I finally incrased that to about an inch.

It turns out therare TWO KINDS OF JUNCTIONS FOR COPPER PIPE. One has dimples inside so that the sleeve goes over the pipe only half the length of the junction, an inch or so I didn't know there were two kinds so that's what I bought and then I spend a lot of time trying to file off the dimple so could slide it all the way down, and push it under the pipe.

BUT THE OTHER KIND has no dimple. You put it on the stump that goes into the WH, slide it all the way down, then move the WH to under the matching pipe. Then lift the junction and somehow hold it in place -- maybe that was easy? -- at the right spot and solder it in place.

[gfretwell]

The first 3 numbers of the Sears part number indicates who really made it. Sears didn't make much of anything.

[devnull]

Using Sharkbite fittings, the average Republican could probably plumb a water heater in under 10 minutes.