Used water heater.

[GaryT]

Water is begining to puddle under my 30 gallon gas water heater and the people at HD told me that the liner is going on it and it needs to be replaced.

I wanted to get a 40 gallon one any way and as it turns out a friend of mine has an electric one sitting in his garage that was used for only a month that he is willing to GIVE to me. My friends brother had installed it and then replaced it with gas due to the high electric bill.

The town I live in provides very inexpensive electric and switching to electric from gas would save some money here. Don't ask me for figures because I don't have them in front of me but I had recently switched from a gas dryer to an electric one and had saved quite a bit in the exchange to make it worth my while.

My question is: does anyone see any potential problems with a water heater that has been used and then sat in a garage (cold winter in NE) for over a year and a half? Is there a major quality difference in a gas vs. electric?]

Thanks for the help, Gary

[DanG]

This will require new electrical work. I assume you have the ampacity to consider the change.

If you are in the same general geographic area, the sacrificial anode should be OK

Go for it. You can install an insulation kit on the outside of the electric that should help the bill too.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Keep the whole world singing. . . . DanG

and the

to be

friend of mine

installed it and

switching to

figures

switched from a

exchange to

water heater

for over a

vs. electric?]

[TURTLE]

This is Turtle.

A used Electric Hot water heater sitting up for a year and a half is nothing at all to mess up anything. Go for it.

Now do put in the proper size wire and breaker to supply the electric service to it. If you have any trouble getting the right size of everything. Just E-mail me and I can look it up on my wire charts and breaker sizing for the spec.s from the Hot Water Tank name tag.

Now I would suggest that you buy the insulation blanket like DanG said for they do make a difference in the cost to operate them.

TURTLE

[Tony Hwang]

to mess up anything. Go for it.

it. If you have any trouble getting the right size

sizing for the spec.s from the Hot Water Tank name

make a difference in the cost to operate them.

Hi, Electric tank needs to be bigger than gas one due to it's slow recovery rate. If it's same size, may run out of hot water. Tony

[JerryMouse]

Do the math anyway. It is almost inconcievable that electric is cheaper than gas. The electric utility burns gas to MAKE the electricity, unless your city owns a hydroelectric plant.

[Doug Miller]

Not necessarily so. A *lot* of places burn coal instead of gas. And I believe nearly twenty percent of the electricity used in the U.S. is generated by nuclear power.

>

[TURTLE]

all to mess up anything. Go for it.

it. If you have any trouble getting the right size

sizing for the spec.s from the Hot Water Tank name

do make a difference in the cost to operate them.

This is Turtle.

If you buy the home Cheap-0 slow recovery type. Yes. Now if you buy the Quick Recovery models there will be very little difference in gas or electric in time to recover. The Quick recovery time for both electric and gas is [ 1 gal. per minute. ] [40 gal. -- 40 minutes ] [ 20 gal. -- 20 minutes ] .

If you can use all the water up at one time. You need a bigger tank as to gas or electric. You should pick the size tank that would supply all the hot water you would need in any 1 hour spand and the tank would not even be running. If you even want to look at recovery time as to picking a tank size. You need a bigger tank to supply all the hot water you would want in any 1 hour of use and not depend on recovery time.

TURTLE

[Stormin Mormon]

The only problem I can imagine is if the heater was full of water, and cracked the tank.

Other than that, they both heat water.