water heater installation questions

I am just a home owner but here goes:

1. Seldom ever see a water heater with legs, and have never seen a new one. Some make a little stand that the heater sits on. Most just sit directly on the floor. It were me, I would put down a piece of linoleum or other non water absorbent material as a cushion for the heater to sit on. If nothing else, use a couple of pieces of 6 mil plastic

1. Again. if it were me, I would sweat a copper male screw fitting into the outlet, that way you wouldn't have to do any soldering the next time. You need to put in new flex line for both the cold inlet and the hot outlet. Don't know what kind of brass valve you have, but I would turn the water off upstream of that brass valve, open the valve, and then solder. Might clamp a vise wrench on the valve just upstream of your solder joint as a heat sink. You get around all these kinds of problems by soldering screw fittings to the pipe and using screwed on valves and and pipe connectors. Plumbers don't do that because it is more expensive and they don't care about change overs cause they get paid. Besides, if it is all soldered together, there is less chance that the homeowners will do it themselves.

If you are really worried about the valve, say the heck with it, remove the valve, solder a screw fitting in the pipe and by a valve that screws in.

George,

I got the water heater successfully installed today. We are up and running with hot water !!

I put the water heater on some of the flexible rubber matting that is installed in the bottom of showers before tile is put down, whatever that is called.

After I cleaned the fitting with a wire brush, turned out it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was - mostly surface corrosion that I cleaned off. It is good enough to continue to use, so I did.

Thanks for the advice.

Tim