# Hot Water Heater Annual Service



## pennstater2005

Once a year I drain/flush the hot water tank. I remove and inspect the anode (sacrificial) rod. The anode rod deteriorates first thus saving the integrity of your metal water tank. I replace it every or every other year. This is all per the manual. Doesn't take much time. Mostly waiting for the water to drain. Don't forget to shut off the gas.

Some before and after pics. That damage to the rod is after one year. $26 to replace. It's magnesium which doesn't last as long as aluminum rods. The first anode rod I bought came with the 1-1/16" socket to remove the old one. Don't forget to use pipe tape on the threads when installing the new. I have limited overhead room so I buy a flexible one and cut off what I don't need. Check the TPR safety valve to make sure it functions as well.







That's the anode rod head bolt. You'll need a breaker bar, probably 2ft.


TPR valve. Just pull that up, water shoots down the PVC pipe.


----------



## mowww

@pennstater2005 thanks for the tips and photos!


----------



## pennstater2005

@mowww You're welcome and thanks for reading!


----------



## Herring

I just replaced a failed expansion tank and wanted to flush the tank also. We moved into the home in 2019 and the tank is a 2013. When opening the drain valve nothing came out. I then removed the valve completely and found out why. Flushing the tank and inspecting/replacing the anode will now be an annual maintenance project.


----------



## pennstater2005

@Herring That is crazy! I hear a lot of folks say that hot water heaters don't last like they use to. While there may be some truth to that maintenance will definitely extend the life of ones tank. Mine is eight years old and looks new. I'm a little excessive though as I even wipe off dust occasionally :?


----------



## Herring

@pennstater2005 Yes, it seems like the entire TLF values maintenance and taking care of their equipment and pride in what they have, it's awesome.


----------



## Trent161

mowww said:


> @pennstater2005 thanks for the tips and photos!


+1. I have heard about the anode but wasn't sure how to go about it. I have also heard about pouring peroxide into the tank to clean it. Has anyone ever tried that?


----------



## Jacks_Designs

Thanks for posting about this!


----------



## Ware

+1

This is one of those things that is easy to put off.


----------



## g-man

My hot water heater doesnt have an anode rod. The website try to explain their rational, but it doesnt make sense to me. Once it leaks, I will buy another brand.


----------



## Jacks_Designs

replaced mine this weekend b/c of this post. Good thing I did.


----------



## mowww

Found a faulty ball valve above mine thanks to this thread. Initial check on my anode and not doing too bad.


----------



## BobLovesGrass

My electric water heater was installed in 1996 so last spring I preventively ordered a Richmond hybrid heat pump unit.
The old heater wouldn't drain well because there was just enough sediment to block the drain. Had to backflush with compressed air, which made a mess when water bubbled out the recently cut pipes on top.........

Really wasn't that much sediment given the age and how I had not flushed it, but definitely proves it needs to be flushed because if you don't do it you might not be able to come time to drain it for some reason.

As I understand it the hybrid heat pump unit has an anode rod that they list as not replaceable but it can be done.


----------



## ScottW

I ended up replacing my water heater this past weekend.
I had neglected service for years. Never had any issues with it, but hadn't been periodically draining/flushing it or checking the anode.

Saturday I shut off the water and drained it down [partly] to check the rod. Unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) after I got the fitting loose with the breaker bar & wrench, what came out was only the top cap of the rod. "Well that's not a good sign." With needle nose pliers I managed to fish up about a 3" long segment of what used to be the anode rod, and I heard another piece fall down into the tank. Closed everything back up and turned the hot water on again to placate the wife, then started shopping for water heaters. Went out to HD and picked up a new one and ancillary supplies.

Sunday morning I shut off the water and started draining. It took >2.5 hours to drain the 50-gal tank, no doubt because of a ton of sediment. Install of the new one went smoothly. Added a drain pan underneath since there wasn't one previously. Replaced the shutoff valve on the cold water feed with a new 1/4 turn ball valve since the old gate valve was not completely shutting off the flow. She's in and working great.

Still need to route a pipe from the T&P relief valve and get some insulation on the hot & cold pipes, will get that done this week.


----------



## Ben S

I saw this thread a couple months ago and decided to check mine today for the first time. The anode was totally gone. Flushed the tank out and went and picked up a new anode. I had a little bit of a scare when I had some initial trouble sourcing the part locally because I already had it apart and I really did not want to do it twice. I did find one though. Definitely make sure you have replacement parts in hand before you get started. I think I'm going to put mine on a two year preventative maintenance schedule.


----------



## pennstater2005

Cool to see you all performing this maintenance! I'm due soon. Hoping my anode rod is good and I can skip a year. Although for the price if it's close it's definitely worth it.

I'm going on 9 years with this tank.


----------



## PNW_George

I have never heard of doing this and while I did have one fail, it lasted nearly 20 years. I have two heaters in my house and can't remember if both have been replaced or not.

We do have relatively pure water in the Seattle area and I don't notice any buildup in tanks, faucets, valves, pipes etc. Could it be this is only recommended in areas with hard water, mineral rich water, or different water conditions in other parts of the country?


----------



## MasterMech

PNW_George said:


> I have never heard of doing this and while I did have one fail, it lasted nearly 20 years. I have two heaters in my house and can't remember if both have been replaced or not.
> 
> We do have relatively pure water in the Seattle area and I don't notice any buildup in tanks, faucets, valves, pipes etc. Could it be this is only recommended in areas with hard water, mineral rich water, or different water conditions in other parts of the country?


Is your HWH electric or gas-fired?


----------



## PNW_George

MasterMech said:


> PNW_George said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have never heard of doing this and while I did have one fail, it lasted nearly 20 years. I have two heaters in my house and can't remember if both have been replaced or not.
> 
> We do have relatively pure water in the Seattle area and I don't notice any buildup in tanks, faucets, valves, pipes etc. Could it be this is only recommended in areas with hard water, mineral rich water, or different water conditions in other parts of the country?
> 
> 
> 
> Is your HWH electric or gas-fired?
Click to expand...

Electric.


----------



## jimmythegreek

Most anode roads can go several years on average water before needing replacement. Some of the pics show rods with lots of life left. It's meant to degrade and sacrifice itself instead of the tank and lining. I have a 16 yo rheem 50gal gas in my parents home that gets flushed yearly amd a rod every 3 or so years. Well worth the trouble to do it


----------



## pennstater2005

jimmythegreek said:


> Most anode roads can go several years on average water before needing replacement. Some of the pics show rods with lots of life left. It's meant to degrade and sacrifice itself instead of the tank and lining. I have a 16 yo rheem 50gal gas in my parents home that gets flushed yearly amd a rod every 3 or so years. Well worth the trouble to do it


This is true. The rod in my picture didn't need replaced but I had it all the way out for the thread here and decided to replace it anyway. When I first checked it was about the thickness of a pencil.


----------



## jayhawk

Thanks for the reminder. Hope I can get it out, heard they can be a fist fight?

I went to electric ...no combustion inside


----------



## Captquin

Good tips. I highly recommend considering a tankless whenever it's time to replace


----------



## pennstater2005

jayhawk said:


> Thanks for the reminder. Hope I can get it out, heard they can be a fist fight?
> 
> I went to electric ...no combustion inside


A breaker bar did the trick for me.



Captquin said:


> Good tips. I highly recommend considering a tankless whenever it's time to replace


That's my plan! Any idea of the life on a tankless system?


----------



## Captquin

15 years +. Water doesn't sit in there like a tank system. You have gas or electric?


----------



## Ware

pennstater2005 said:


> …Any idea of the life on a tankless system?


----------



## g-man

Be careful with hard water and the maintenance requirement of a tankless.


----------



## rjw0283

I just replaced my 26-year-old water heater back in December. I didn't do much maintenance on it due to its age. I was waiting for it to fail. The tank started leaking, there was nothing I could do and it had a good life. 
I bought a new one for $550 and put it in. Plumbers wanted 1200-1800 to install a similar model. I figured even if I messed it up and installed it wrong, I could just buy another 2 for the price to install one! I drained the old one enough to get the weight down so I could roll it out the back door. Had the new one up in an hour.


----------



## pennstater2005

Ware said:


> pennstater2005 said:
> 
> 
> 
> …Any idea of the life on a tankless system?
Click to expand...

20 years is solid.



g-man said:


> Be careful with hard water and the maintenance requirement of a tankless.


What are the maintenance requirements?


----------



## g-man

Mineral buildup cleaning

https://www.waterheaterhub.com/do-tankless-water-heaters-need-maintenance/


----------



## BobLovesGrass

Tankless are ideal for unlimited hot water supply but beyond that are grossly oversold.
They are a good option to have but aren't the universal solution many claim they are.


----------



## Ware

BobLovesGrass said:


> Tankless are ideal for unlimited hot water supply but beyond that are grossly oversold.
> They are a good option to have but aren't the universal solution many claim they are.


I agree they are "oversold". 

Mine is the size of a small suitcase and will make hot water continuously at a rate of about 11gpm. It has an Energy Factor of 0.96 and as previously mentioned an expected useful life of about 20 years. But like anything else, they're probably not for everyone.


----------



## MasterMech

BobLovesGrass said:


> Tankless are ideal for unlimited hot water supply but beyond that are grossly oversold.
> They are a good option to have but aren't the universal solution many claim they are.


I couldn't see myself going with anything else so long as I had natural gas service. But that's coming from a VERY mechanically competent homeowner in an area with great water, who doesn't mind the bi-annual de-scaling.

My previous home was a DHW heating coil in an oil-fired boiler with a storage tank. It wasn't new when I bought and didn't ask me for a thing in 7+ years of ownership. The boiler was pushing 20 years when I moved and the writing was on the wall, a fact I made sure the new owner was aware of before purchase.

Tank-style heaters have maintenance requirements too, it's just that they're cheap enough to ignore and replace every 7-10 years. Water quality (hard water) is a factor with with pretty much all water heaters, tanked or tankless. If it's bad enough to create maintenance issues, I can't imagine not going with a softener system for at least the hot-side.


----------



## BobLovesGrass

People forget we don't all live in the same place or have the same needs.
If you live in FL with 70degree ground water a quick hand wash not long enough to trigger a tankless is fine. You live in WI with 45degree well water, maybe you appreciate a tank of warm water waiting for you.
It was a coworker who loves his tankless that talked me out of one. The high intensity means lots of scale if the water is hard and this means maintenance is a much bigger deal to keep up with.
I have young kids, someone is washing their hands in my house every couple minutes it seems. For hand washing you might be turning the water off about the time a tankless lights.
But if you have a family that has multiple overlapping showers every day then a tankless might serve you better.
One size doesn't fit all.
On the life expectancy I finally swapped out a 40Gallon electric from 1996 in fall of 2020, it wasn't giving me any trouble but the hybrid heatpump model was on sale and I figured I wouldn't wait for the old one to fail in my finished basement.

The low intensity of the heat pump should drastically reduce scale, I run it as electric about 4 months of the year because I don't have the heat to spare in that room in winter.


----------



## Captquin

They certainly aren't for everyone. We have a family of 4 and I would not dream of going back to a tank unit. We can run any combination of shower, bath, dishwasher, and washing machine without any thought of timing. It's incredibly convenient.

Incoming water temp is important. Gas has a much easier time than electric. We are in the mid Atlantic and our house is 100% electric. I installed a 240v 36kw unit and it's performed wonderfully. Didn't have to add a gas line or vent. You do need to make sure you panel has 1) 200A service and 2) spaced for all the double pole breakers.

Also, it saved so much space in the mud room that we actually remodeled it as part of the project. Win/win.

There shouldn't be any additional delay in hot water delivery from a tank or a tankless system. The cold water sitting in the existing pipes has to be evacuated regardless of where the hot water is coming from. Only way to avoid that is with a recirculating pump. Having multiple water heaters with shorter runs to their point of use will also speed up hot water delivery.


----------



## Ware

Our Rinnai has a built in circulation pump to deliver instant hot water. It is WiFi enabled so you can set up a schedule from your phone so it doesn't waste energy circulating at times you know you don't need it. We set it to circulate for a couple hours in the morning when we're getting ready and for a few hours at night when we get home. For any other times we want the convenience you can start the circulation anytime from the app and set it to run for an interval ranging from 5 minutes to 5 hours. It throttles itself to maintain the loop at setpoint. For houses that aren't plumbed in a loop, they make a bypass valve you can install under a sink somewhere at the other end of your house.


----------



## Captquin

@Ware nailed it. Also for those considering tankless, Rinnai is the market leader in gas, Eemax in electric.


----------

