Quick basic advice on a dripping gas 40-gal hot-water heater

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Also, before draining the tank to remove sediment or to work on it, it's a good idea to shut the gas off a long time before you're going to do the work. That way, you can use up most of the hot water in the tank through normal use, instead of wasting it.

Reply to
trader4
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Hi Rick, Oh. That changes things. I'll check with the literature. We thought the hot had a heat check valve inside the nipple. It had a black rubber center which the cold nipple didn't have.

Due to the fact there was little room, and we thought the heat-loss valve was already there, we didn't put in a flap valve and we used a straight stainless steel flexible pipe.

If what you say is correct, then we may need to replace the stainless steel flexible pipe with an S-shaped copper flex tube plus a dialectric union.

One question that still confuses me is the BRASS on the ends of some of the stainless steel and copper pipes. Can we pub BRASS to galvanized or must we alwyas use a dialectric union. (I ask because the stainless steel pipe had brass on the end yet it was advertised for iron to iron).

Donna

Reply to
Donna Ohl, Grady Volunteer Coo

If you are talking about the galvanized nipples with blue plastic flaps that go between the heater at the cold/hot ports, those are thermal breaks - not check valves. They reduce the heat loss from the tank into the pipes when the water is not being used.

A check valve is significantly larger than a nipple and would typically only be be found after the main valve and before the heater.

Reply to
Rick Blaine

Hi trader,

I learned this one in spades!

We had used up some of the hot water (Bill took a really really long shower with the gas turned off) before the fiasco of the snapped valve:

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We had warm, not hot, water all over the garage as the tank shot it out two feet. Luckily I was around as the tank had just been righted after tipping over as we tried to get it off the stand, full of water. It was horrid.
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The only good thing was you had already admonished us to have tepid water in the tank and that's what saved us from getting scalded as Bill stuck his finger in the hole (it was just the right size) to stop the leak and I bucketed the water outside.
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We would have been burned had we not taken that good advice from this newsgroup! Others should heed the warning too.

Thanks, Donna

Reply to
Donna Ohl, Grady Volunteer Coo

Hi hallerb, I understand your point. But, from what I read, they used to be brass and the manufacturers switched to the plastic for cost reasons only.

Also, I read a brass ball valve doesn't clog as easily.

Given our experience this past weekend, where the valve first clogged and then broke off inside the water heater, it would seem to us that over time, the brass will be less likely to break than the plastic.

Of course, one reason ours clogged was likely the fact we never flushed it so the sediments may have been too much for any valve - and one reason it broke is that we were manhandling it trying to get the tipped-over water heater back on the stand ... so you might be right.

I think I now understand how to replace the brass valve. In fact, a more important issue came up in that our dishwasher suddenly stopped working. I think it's due to the sediment being sent through the pipes (our shower heads were totally clogged all of a sudden, with sandy grainy stuff).

I opened a separate thread on alt.home.repair to ask how to clean out a dishwasher without being able to remove it (it's bricked in it seems).

I feel like "this old house" is attacking me so it's nice to have this wonderful newsgroup as my friends to help in times of need!

Donna

Reply to
Donna Ohl, Grady Volunteer Coo

Nice start. "Quick". "Basic". Good words to reel in the punters.

The poor souls. They don't realise the long clever trolling they are about to embark upon.

And so it is.

Reply to
John

Dear John,

Did you actually *read* the thread?

If you did, you'll note that this group moved a novice from a leaky water heater to someone who became rather knowledgeable in how to purchase a water heater, how to calculate costs and tradeoffs, what to modify on the new water heater, what the warranty does and does not offer, what materiel is required and how much it costs, what are some of the pitfalls of installing a water heater on your own, an autopsy of the old water heater, detailed complete photos (I took hundreds and posted more than 50 for all to see) for a public assessment of the work performed, and I posted dozens of PDFs and links to key literature explaining things like how teflon doesn't affect the electrical connection, how the government calculates average household usage, how much a tenth of an EF point really means in dollars (about $5/year), how to adjust seismic straps, etc.

I asked. I responded. I was courteous. I was timely. We took your advice. We did the work. I posted pictures of the results. I responded to each and every comment that suggested a response.

And I plan on redoing some of the work as a result (e.g. the flexible gas line and the drain bib and the overflow pipe, etc.).

If I received help, I thank the group for that. If I sound knowledgeable, and if that offends you, it's only because of the kind help from this group and from my research.

Donna

Reply to
Donna Ohl, Grady Volunteer Coo

hot water temperature should never be set hot enough to scald. thats a major safety issue.......

Reply to
hallerb

The dishwasher is bricked in? Sheesh, how did they even manage that?

Fortunately most things can be accessed by removing the kick plate. The water inlet is a solenoid valve normally in the left-front corner of the machine. It will attach with a compression fitting which you can disconnect and then you should be able to remove the valve and clean it out. I suspect your clog is right there.

Reply to
James Sweet

Donna - you did the wrong thing. You're not supposed to feed the trolls. Ignore them and they whither away. Don't take it personally. He baited you and you took the bait. Don't do that. Get back to learning more about plumbing and water tanks please!

Reply to
58plumbers

Don't bother replacing the WH drain now. Fix the clogged dishwasher instead. Replace that factory drain valve in six months when you flush the WH for your first maintenance interval.

As for that clogged dishwasher, you'll likely have to break the bricks bricking it in in order to get to the innards. Good luck. Ask questions. Take advice with a grain of salt.

And post back with your results!

Reply to
58plumbers

donna is a nice new home owner. before you know it she will be like most of us long termers, doing what we must, and ignoring drain valves etc.

all she needs is doing one preventive maintence job that turns a working whatever into a non functional disaster that costs a fortune to fix.

i rather imagine most of us have been thru one of those.

kinda like pruning a tree, having a limb fall onto the roof, while replacing damaged shingles fall off roof, hit power line, ripping it off the side of the house. fortunately the poor fellow didnt get shocked, or seriously hurt.

but the colateral costs, pay someone to finish tree trimming and clean up, pay electrician to put service back on house, losts food in fridge, power was off too long. my friend, spent nearly 2 days in hospital, sent home on crutches.missed a week work no sick time.......

this happened to a guy i knew.

a old neighbor decided to replace his bathroom floor. lose floorboard, ran nail into water line, flood took down kitchen cieling..

need plumber, new cieling and contracted out bathroom redo.

so he decided cars would be his thing, took air cleaner off to adjust carbuerator, reved engine, air cleaner housing dropped into fan went thru radiator.

tow truck, new fan, new radiator, misc repairs, had carb replaced.

new DIYers be careful so we dont add your story to the list:)

my memorable event:(

did some plumbing, opened main valve with one connection still open to flush lines, main valve failed couldnt shut off, had to call water company who had great trouble finding main valve, as street had been raised........

could of got arrested so upset i forgot to pay for valve at hardware store, i just walked out, no register stop, the store owner who knew me thought it funny, as my shoies went squish squish waterlogged as i walked out..

just a memorable day for a home repairer.

a buddy of mine in detroit was doing some wiring, turned breaker back on, all power in building went out, fact all power from detroit to new york. that big power failure from some years ago........... wasnt his fault but just imagine:)

now that was funny!!!!!

Reply to
hallerb

Oh it happens to the best of us, it's why contractors are bonded. I once went to replace the distributor on a car, somehow managed to drop a socket down into the timing belt cover while trying to locate TDC, and then broke the timing belt in the process of getting that out. Thankfully it turned out to be a non-interference engine so no major damage was done. On top of all that, the car happened to belong to my boss, and I was working on it in the back parking lot at work. A 20 minute job turned into 3 days of early mornings and late evenings since so much had to come apart to fix the stupid thing. In the end though no real harm was done and it was a learning experience to say the least. Some would give up after that, but being a true DIYer I climbed back in the saddle and haven't made that same mistake again. For every time I break something and make a job 10x what it should have been, I save a fortune on a dozen other projects by doing them myself and I can provide advice to others to prevent them from doing what I did.

When I was a kid I watched my dad hit a water pipe with a Sawzall while putting in a light fixture, oops! Always take great care to cut a small hole first so you can see whats in there.

Reply to
James Sweet

This could turn into a whole new thread of major f*ckups that we learned from....

(One of) mine was when replacing the clutch on the family car--along with my older brother--when we were 14 and 17 respectively. I put the first bolt in the pressure plate, 'bumped' the starter in order to pull the engine around to access the rest...

...and forgot to pull the coil wire. BAM! Engine fired up (briefly) and trashed the new pressure plate. Luckily no other damage or injury resulted.

jak

Reply to
jakdedert

Never had even a single one of those, and I physically built the entire house.

Reply to
Rod Speed

On Feb 19, 5:37=A0pm, " snipped-for-privacy@aol.com" wrote:

Ain't that the truth.

I still err on the side of too much PM because I seem to be one of those guys who manage to pull off just about every job I actually *do* without too much hassle, but God forbid that I let any PM slide on anything, it will bite me in the a$$... There are a few exceptions to that rule however.

the funniest was, though, my ex-GF had a '69 Plymouth Valiant that I'd found for her, because her old Monte Carlo was too much of a rusty roach to pass PA state safety inspection without a new frame. It was in immaculate shape, and ran and drove well. she took it to a local garage to get it inspected and the guy failed her for dry-rotted suspension bushings. So I called up PST, ordered a front end rebuild kit, and went to town. I figured that it would be pretty easy, and after all I was a mechanical engineering student so had access to the school machine shop, what could possibly go wrong? I drove the control arms down to another shop to have them bead blasted, painted everything up real nice, went to put the first side back together and I realize that the strut rod bushings are WAY too thick. Called up PST, after being on the phone with tech support for quite some while, figured out that they had the year breaks in their catalog wrong and I needed the earlier version. Well their bastard people wouldn't trade me for the ones I needed, wouldn't sell them separately, etc. etc. etc. Also found out that one tie rod was swapped end for end so I needed to order a new inner tie rod end as well (basic rebuild kit only had outer tie rods, and the inspector had flagged outer tie rod ends for replacement as well.) Car was on jackstands on the street in front of her house for about 3 weeks while this was all going on (this was supposed to be about a 3-day project, I had it all planned out...) finally her annoying neighbor called the city to schedule tree trimming, I had to throw the car together one evening wrong bushings and all just to move it so it didn't get towed. By this time I'd found a guy with a machine shop in his basement to turn down the strut rod bushings for me to the thickness actually required, but I didn't have time to R&R the lower control arm on one side.

Somewhere out there there is still a pea soup green '69 Valiant with a nice polygraphite front end that has one original rubber lower control arm bushing and one original rubber strut rod bushing... what a charlie foxtrot.

You would think that I'd learned my lesson but a couple months later my '67 Dart blew up its transmission on my way to her house, and I coasted it into the exact same parking place where the Valiant had been sitting. I borrowed the Valiant, went to the junkyard, got another transmission, swapped that in at the side of the road in the snow, and the car moved about 6 feet and never moved again. I sold it for $50 just to get it the hell out of my sight.

Lesson learned; I don't do any work on cars outside of a garage or driveway anymore... no job, no matter how simple appearing, is not going to take about 10x as long as you think it is and if you're in a hurry you're going to make mistakes.

nate

(you may all laugh at me now)

Reply to
N8N

Any good installation of an appliance like a washing machine, dishwasher etc should have a filter screen / rubber washer fitted to the hose fitting to the tap that controls the water to the appliance, with a bit of luck it should be as easy as to removing the hose from the tap and cleaning that filter / screen. There could be an additional screen fitted to the water inlet valve on the appliance as well that might need cleaning so depending on the difficulty on accessing the fittings, start with the easy one first and test from there before attempting the more difficult one. If you have cleaned out all the filters and it still doesn't work you could have had the unfortunate problem of luck that it also failed at close to the same time (It happens occasionally unfortunately) so good luck with it all. Justy.

Reply to
Only Just

They usually have one in the water inlet solenoid itself. Thankfully the intake plumbing on a dishwasher is really simple. Copper tubing to a compression fitting at the solenoid valve, and a hose out of that through a nozzle into the washer compartment. The recirculation plumbing that does the washing is separate and very hard to clog.

Reply to
James Sweet

I've never had anything like that with previous houses either, and its easy enough to check for that stuff.

Reply to
Rod Speed

Another trick to totally avoid the plastic drain valve is to have a 3/4" pipe fitting ready that can attach to a hose, then unscrew and remove the gas valve and thermostat assembly and slide the pipe and hose in its place.

Reply to
Bob

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