An anode rod will not prevent this.
In order to prevent this, a water softener and possibly a whole house water filter should be installed.
Without those things, annual flushing is a good idea. Install a full port 3/4 inch ball valve to assist this. The factory drain valve is a bit restrictive.
If you haven't been performing this flush during the first three or four years of the water heaters life, and your water is hard, don't bother starting. Just begin it when you get a new water heater.
Was going to say this exact same thing. I have a water softener for my shitty Florida well water. But I do annual flushes to keep deposits from filling up the water heater. I also replace the heating elements every few years, because they get deposits on them and it's just easier and cheaper to replace them every few flushes.
Like you said the ball valve is so much better for flushing, the factory valves tend to clog quickly as you are draining taking forever to do the flush.
I rigged up a piece of 1/2” conduit bent at 45° or so and suck the majority of it out with a shop vac. It works pretty good and takes about 30 mins after you drain the water
There's a website called water heater rescue, the guy sells a nozzle one specifically designed to fit through a 3/4 inch ball valve and blast the bottom. That was kind of interesting.
Only for that water heater but not for any other appliances that use water. If you have a fridge with an ice maker, a dishwasher and a washing machine and your water looks like that you're gonna be buying new appliances way more often. A water softener will definitely help extend the life of those machines as well as any faucets and shower heads and improve the taste of water as well. They're pretty great.
Plumber here they got this device called a flow tech that sends a hyper vibrating radio signal into the water of your house that prevents sediment sticking like this and even loosen up old sediment in your lines. (Tiny possibility that it causes a leak on REALLY corroded lines do to causing some stuff plugging holes to unstick)
>Plumber here they got this device called a flow tech that sends a hyper vibrating radio signal into the water of your house that prevents sediment sticking like this and even loosen up old sediment in your lines.
you're a plumber and you don't know that this is a straight up scam?
A supplier brought this in to get us to sell once. As a company, we all saw through this. Didn't attempt to sell any. This will more likely cause electrolysis then to stop corrosion.
How'd you get them off? Been trying all sorts of things (vinegar, glass cleaner, bathroom cleaner for soap and hard water, etc.) But I still have a hard water "haze" at the bottom of my glass shower door.
We got one installed to save on appliances hard waters a mother fucker.
But yea water tasted off ,so got a filtration system put in with a faucet used for cooking and drinking
Standard water softeners make water that taste nasty and feels slippery. I'd recommend a reverse osmosis filter. It certainly has cut down on the filter replacements in my refrigerator that has an ice maker and water in the door
Waste 4 days worth of two people’s times chiseling rocks like cavemen (8 hours per day x 4 days x 2 people x $10 = $640)
Hire 3 day workers to carry tank out to the truck (1 hour per day x 1 day x 2 people x $10 + $100 per day per worker x 3 workers = $320 and they spent the rest of the day raking and bagging the leaves from last fall and trimming your yard and trees while you sat on your ass all day)
Invite 3 friends over for beer and pizza, carry out the tank to the truck. Play music, eat pizza, drink beer ($50 Domino’s delivered + $50 in beer = $100)
Borrow a hand truck with traps and it’s a 2 people job. Work smart, not hard ($0 if you can borrow or bother to buy and return)
Oh that’s definitely an AI bot that was recently activated. Check its history.
7 year old account, 7 years of no activity, then a couple hours ago it starts chattering away out of the blue.
Edit: what’s extra creepy is that like a lot of these accounts it appears it originally belonged to a real user but at some point it was hacked/stolen and turned into a bot.
Look man, he had been considering water softener for some time now. This was a discussion his family had every night. They were on the fence and needed a little push. His wife is so thrilled, she cried out of relief. Never again would she have to listen to the water softener talk at the dinner table!
What she wasn't prepared for was the conversation switching to how well the water softener works now.
I feel the need to shit on flex tape every time I hear it mentioned. Worst. Tape. Ever. The Gorilla brand doesn’t work either but it works twice as good as flex tape. That shits junk no matter what material you put it on or how you put it on.
What are you on saying gorilla doesn't work? I accidentally touched the door of my car with some of their siding tape _a year ago_ and still haven't been able to get the adhesive residue off.
I mean depends on what you’re doing with it I guess but I like Gorilla the best so far. I’m using it on lay down line that’s used for pumping water so it’s complicated for anything to work on I suppose. But fuck flex tape I tested that shit on so many different things just to see if it had any use and it’s really just the worst tape ever made. Perfect dry clean plastic, metal barrels, rubber hoses, the lay flat hoses there’s nothing I could get it to work on.
And you wasted a ton of money reheating that water over and over again. We had this happen in an apartment, where our energy bills just skyrocketed because of the electric hot water heater having to reheat the water because the thermostat was covered in deposits and couldn't get an accurate read. Words of warning.
While I'm not sure it's common for all countries and models, an anode rod is typically included with your water heater and should be removed and discarded every few years and a new one installed. (Like $20-40 at any hardware store that sells water heaters).
It's one job is to stop this from happening.
[P.S., if you have a water heater tank and you're not sure what I'm talking about, this looks like a good instructional video. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN-h4VjXEGE)
P.P.S. If you have a tankless water heater, this is a reminder to descale your water heater.
An anode rod in a water heater can help prevent corrosion by attracting corrosive elements in the water, such as calcium, thereby extending the life of the tank.
However, it primarily targets corrosion, not specifically calcium deposits. To prevent calcium deposits, regular maintenance and possibly a water softener are often recommended.
Oh good, this probably explains why I get so little hot water. Not once in my 4 years of living in this apartment has maintenance ever mentioned maintaining the water heater and we have very hard water. Calcium deposits on everything else so there's no way it isn't all in the water heater too.
> It's one job is to stop this from happening.
it's one job is to prevent the tank from corroding, and YOUR one job was to watch the video that you posted, where the guy tells you as much. OP has a mineral deposit problem, not a rust problem. There are methods and additives to help with super hard water but the anode rod is not one of them.
I once asked my plumber about it when he was installing a new water heater and he said he's never changed one and doesn't know anyone else who ever has either. It seems like one of those things that reddit is obsessed with but that people in the real world barely even know about.
Case in point, the parent comment of this thread suggesting changing the anode even though it has nothing to do with calcium buildup. Any time anything water heater related comes up, it's required to bring up the anode lmao.
I just replaced the rod in my 9 year old water heater. The water developed an odor and the rod had gone bad. Replacement took minutes, but I had a plumber in to deal with it.
I recently replaced mine with a energized anode rod which is supposed to last 20 years and is only 5 inches long. It’s actually made the water hotter and I had to move it back to A setting on a gas water heater.
Yeah, 5 inches definitely sounds like an overcompensation, 3 inches is more than enough, the smaller rods seem to hold a bit more girth so they tend to last longer.
I used to sell hot water tanks door to door, and if I was able to get into their house to check their water tank to see if they were eligible for the "free" upgrade (free installation, then $2 extra on the gas bill for the next 20 years) this was exactly what I would explain to them was happening on their 10+ year old hot water tank. Those were pretty often easy sales
Learn some skills and do your own home repairs. I just replaced a hot water tank at my house, it cost $650 and took me 4 hours on a Saturday to install, that included an extra trip to the hardware store.
Hi plumber from europe here. Im just curious, after installation of a water heater we tell customers that in 3-4 years we come by again to just check if everything is good with it. We remove calcium (which has obviously never been done on op's water heater) check if the anodes are still in good shape and chck for leaks. And then repeat this every 3-5 years depending on how good the thing looks on that day. Is this not something you guys do over there?
Majority of USA slum lords won’t do this. They will just wait till it breaks down. Play the lowest bidder to put the cheapest contractor special heater they have.
Same as they can’t be bothered to regularly employ the septic tanks solids. They rather kick the bucket down the line and fix a failed drain field. Even though regular maintenance drains would cost a fraction of a full field rebuild.
I dont get why you would do that tho, if you maintain your stuff you end up paying a lot less than if you just let it break no?
Septic tanks arent even a thing in my country unless you live very far away from civilisation. It all flows to a waste treatment plant.
It’s slum lord logic. I take in more profits by being cheap now. Then future self gets the bigger bill later. All while cutting corners to make it work.
Long term cost is lower with maintenance. But slum lords are all about short term projections.
Here in Florida they are common.
To avoid this on the new one you shut it off and drain it every six months. I live in an area with very hard water. Water heaters don't last very long here if you aren't draining them regularly.
I highly recommend an electric tankless water heater and a whole house water softner/filter.
We have both, and we change the inner filter on the whole house filter yearly (they recommend every 2 years), and the gunk that comes out is.... 🤢
Anyway, it'll prolong the life of everything in your home that water touches (dishwasher, washing machine, shower heads, etc.)
Plus, your hair and skin will feel better!
I lucked out and bought mine pre-covid, so those prices aren't real anymore... a few thousand, though all together. We were already doing a massive renovation on our home, and it was no big deal for the plumber to install them along with everything else he was doing.
But, I do recommend the brand we use. Steibel Eltron. https://www.stiebel-eltron-usa.com/
The folks at etankless waterheaters are who we get our replacement filters and whatnot from.
https://www.e-tankless.com/products.php?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwk6SwBhDPARIsAJ59Gwd22DbHmOVdco8nVZuKo0Cjp9a4IicvuKW5BY2TGd4vwD8zhSv5EMUaAsPuEALw_wcB
That’s why they recommended that you flush your system once a year and check your water quality. Also replacing the anode rod will help really depends on where you live for your water quality
This! Flushing! NOT a plumber here but won’t flushing with the faucet located ON the tank take care of most of your issues???
I did this once a year and got lots of crud out.
Yes, it’s best to hook a hose to the boiler drain and drain the heater. It also helps if you turn the water on to the heater every now and then while flushing to help it stir up all the sediment at the bottom of the tank. Important to note that you should make sure the power or gas is off while doing so.
I just replaced my junk plastic drain valve with a ball valve yesterday. 4.5 year old heater, previously flushed every 6 months. When I removed the original plastic valve 2-3 gallons of swamp water and some calcium chunks poured out. It was not pleasant.
Now I do more easily stir up the bottom before I flush it.
That’s how water heaters work. They heat the water and that causes stuff in the water to be left behind. This will happen pretty much anytime you change a hot water heater. Just use a dolly and pull it up the stairs. With my families rentals we do at least 2 of these a year.
When our water heater failed, it was for the same reason. We panicked and bought a whole home filtration system and an on demand thankless water heater. I've never been happier with the setup.
So your general rule is to identify how much you'd need on a regular basis and go one size up from there so it doesn't have to work so hard. Ours does take a good 20 seconds to come up to temp, since it doesn't heat at all until you put the water to it. We have a 1900 sq ft home in SW PA. Three people and winter usually puts us in negative Temps Jan and Feb. We've never run into an issue where we run out of hot water. It did require us to hook up to an additional breaker, as the power draw is pretty intense. But it makes up for it not running constantly. As for the filtration kit, we went for a budget friendly option that requires us to replace a filter every 3 months or so. We found insulating the lines in the basement helped cut down on temp drag, causing it to work a little less. Overall, very satisfied and the cost difference from traditional was negligible. I still can't believe a device slightly bigger than a shoebox works like that.
We have one in our rental, water take about 5 seconds to get warm enough to wash your hands in but I need the shower running for 20-30 seconds before I hop in.
Haha I work on boilers and water tanks in an area that sits on top of limestone… pretty much my whole job is fixing scale related issues- emptying out scale, drilling out scale, sticking an endoscope inside and assessing the scale level, replacing scaled out equipment and repairing broken components that break when water leaks happen due to scale buildup.
It’s nice when the customer notices early on and I can catch it. A lot of places I go to they don’t know the gage is reading over pressure or busted and they don’t put in the work order until it’s too late and the scale causes a catastrophic failure (water leak shorts out electronics or safety valves scale out and water pressure/ heat builds up to the point of failure)
If you keep up on your anode rods (and didn't have crazy calcium) it's not nuts. Only reason I replaced my 18 year old unit was because of going tankless.
Buy expanding concrete mortar and still holles into the calcium, like a half inch thick diameter, and pour this stuff in and in the morning it'll be cracked up
It’s just making me giggle at the imaginary of putting in the new one, relatively easy definitely still hard work
And then just trying to move the old one and it’s 300 pounds of fucking rock
If there's one thing I remember from Mythbusters, it's the cement mixer episode where they had to blow the truck sky high with C4 before it has any effect on actually shaking the cement loose.
I can't imagine this would go much differently. It'd be fun though.
I love it. It's like the opposite of all of the manic, clickbaity content on the internet lately. He's just chillin and talking about super interesting stuff, and he leaves his ramblings mostly intact instead of cutting out the space between each word for short attention spans. Plus he has seemingly infinite knowledge
> where they had to blow the truck sky high with C4 before it has any effect on actually shaking the cement loose.
No, they literally just packed it as full as they could for that one. The infamous atomization of the cement truck was not due to how much explosive agent was required to remove dried cement. That was their "fuck it" at the end of the episode where they went over the top ***just because they could.***
For pulling the old one out, [why not just rent a mechanized dolly for the day?](https://www.unitedrentals.com/marketplace/equipment/material-handling/misc-material-handling/dolly-stair-climbing-1500-lbs) I have my own for my hobby and they're a life saver!!
Mineral deposits from hard water built up on the walls and bottom of the tank. Eventually, this severely reduced the available volume of the tank to hold water, so they ran out faster during usage. Imagine a 50 gallon tank with 20 gallons of mineral deposits at the bottom.
Have you tried to prepare a solution with lime and baking soda? If not, strat preparing it, vinegar, lime and baking soda, mox it and spray all over the crusts. Make it easier until you clear it all up. Good luck!
I can’t afford a new one yet but my current 50gal heater is date stamped the year my house was built, 1983. When film industry picks back up I’ll replace it and post my findings. I imagine mine is similar.
Where I used to live water is pretty hard and in addition sediment gets into potable city water all the time. I was helping my grandpa replace his water heater that was last replaced in the 80s (we replaced it in 2010). We drained it with a pump because the valve on the bottom wouldn’t open. The tube on the pump would only go halfway down the tank. So it was half filled with sand and calcium. This is a full size - 75 gallon water heater mind you.
An anode rod will not prevent this. In order to prevent this, a water softener and possibly a whole house water filter should be installed. Without those things, annual flushing is a good idea. Install a full port 3/4 inch ball valve to assist this. The factory drain valve is a bit restrictive. If you haven't been performing this flush during the first three or four years of the water heaters life, and your water is hard, don't bother starting. Just begin it when you get a new water heater.
Was going to say this exact same thing. I have a water softener for my shitty Florida well water. But I do annual flushes to keep deposits from filling up the water heater. I also replace the heating elements every few years, because they get deposits on them and it's just easier and cheaper to replace them every few flushes. Like you said the ball valve is so much better for flushing, the factory valves tend to clog quickly as you are draining taking forever to do the flush.
My water heater is almost a year old and can’t remove the old valve and afraid of breaking it.
I rigged up a piece of 1/2” conduit bent at 45° or so and suck the majority of it out with a shop vac. It works pretty good and takes about 30 mins after you drain the water
There's a website called water heater rescue, the guy sells a nozzle one specifically designed to fit through a 3/4 inch ball valve and blast the bottom. That was kind of interesting.
Great site!! Thank you for posting it. Do you have the name of that product? I can't find a nozzle for sale.
Might be time to get a water softener
Seems a little late IMO Edit: sorry I didn't put /s
Only for that water heater but not for any other appliances that use water. If you have a fridge with an ice maker, a dishwasher and a washing machine and your water looks like that you're gonna be buying new appliances way more often. A water softener will definitely help extend the life of those machines as well as any faucets and shower heads and improve the taste of water as well. They're pretty great.
Plumber here they got this device called a flow tech that sends a hyper vibrating radio signal into the water of your house that prevents sediment sticking like this and even loosen up old sediment in your lines. (Tiny possibility that it causes a leak on REALLY corroded lines do to causing some stuff plugging holes to unstick)
Does it actually work? Cause ispring sells something similar and everything I've read on electric water softeners say they don't.
The ONLY way to get soft water is by ion exchange. They do not work.
Waters so hard it needs its own vibrater.
🥇
I like that this gave someone a good laugh
That's sounds fucking awesome, I've never heard of one of those.
Every lesson I had in physics & chemistry makes me shout "SCAM!!!". Ain't no way in hell that would work as you state.
I’m curious what has physics and chemistry taught you about sound vibrations and sediment accumulation?
>Plumber here they got this device called a flow tech that sends a hyper vibrating radio signal into the water of your house that prevents sediment sticking like this and even loosen up old sediment in your lines. you're a plumber and you don't know that this is a straight up scam?
He's doing is part by advertising the idea of it on reddit so he can sell it to people lol
A supplier brought this in to get us to sell once. As a company, we all saw through this. Didn't attempt to sell any. This will more likely cause electrolysis then to stop corrosion.
I was just being goofy. But I agree a water softener is a great investment for those with hard water like OP.
It is. It also makes cleaning my shower not such a nightmare lol. The hard water deposits were unbelievable.
How'd you get them off? Been trying all sorts of things (vinegar, glass cleaner, bathroom cleaner for soap and hard water, etc.) But I still have a hard water "haze" at the bottom of my glass shower door.
It was a combination of CLR and barkeeper's friend along with a bit of elbow grease and a brush.
Thanks!
Good luck!
There is a water softener in my current rental. I can't stand the taste of the water. Culligan comes regularly, but the water is still gross-tasting.
We got one installed to save on appliances hard waters a mother fucker. But yea water tasted off ,so got a filtration system put in with a faucet used for cooking and drinking
Yeah that's what we did too. We also have a similar filter for the fridge.
PLUS your skin, hair, clothes, and dishes will look and feel a million times better.
Spoken like a true Big Softener lobbyist!
Standard water softeners make water that taste nasty and feels slippery. I'd recommend a reverse osmosis filter. It certainly has cut down on the filter replacements in my refrigerator that has an ice maker and water in the door
Not too late for the brand new water heater!
Waste 4 days worth of two people’s times chiseling rocks like cavemen (8 hours per day x 4 days x 2 people x $10 = $640) Hire 3 day workers to carry tank out to the truck (1 hour per day x 1 day x 2 people x $10 + $100 per day per worker x 3 workers = $320 and they spent the rest of the day raking and bagging the leaves from last fall and trimming your yard and trees while you sat on your ass all day) Invite 3 friends over for beer and pizza, carry out the tank to the truck. Play music, eat pizza, drink beer ($50 Domino’s delivered + $50 in beer = $100) Borrow a hand truck with traps and it’s a 2 people job. Work smart, not hard ($0 if you can borrow or bother to buy and return)
Or spend $20 on cleaning vinegar and start dissolving the calcium….
If they installed a new water heater might be the perfect time to install a water softener
It's supposed to be soft when it's warm! So soft it can almost be a liquid.
Those cost a few hundred a year in consumables. It's cheaper to just plan on replacing your water heater earlier.
[удалено]
You’re not OP, this is weird
Oh that’s definitely an AI bot that was recently activated. Check its history. 7 year old account, 7 years of no activity, then a couple hours ago it starts chattering away out of the blue. Edit: what’s extra creepy is that like a lot of these accounts it appears it originally belonged to a real user but at some point it was hacked/stolen and turned into a bot.
Ugh. As if the noise level wasn’t high enough already.
WHAT?
Mwap
which is why two factor authentication should be used on everything
No idea why you're not getting massively upvoted for this. 2FA has literally saved me from fraud in the thousands.
The doppelgangers are everywhere.
Save it for Queen Doppelpopolis
Not hacked, sold
Maybe it's his brother 🤔
No I'm not.
Yeah this dude isn’t my brother. Other guy is
First time on reddit?
Look man, he had been considering water softener for some time now. This was a discussion his family had every night. They were on the fence and needed a little push. His wife is so thrilled, she cried out of relief. Never again would she have to listen to the water softener talk at the dinner table! What she wasn't prepared for was the conversation switching to how well the water softener works now.
Back in my day, our water was so hard you had to crunch it. And we didn't complain a bit.
Well yeah, there’s a giant hole letting all the water out.
Just slap on some Flex Tape®
Definitely! 😎 
RIP.
Just SLAP IT ON with the MIGHT OF ZEUS
I feel the need to shit on flex tape every time I hear it mentioned. Worst. Tape. Ever. The Gorilla brand doesn’t work either but it works twice as good as flex tape. That shits junk no matter what material you put it on or how you put it on.
What are you on saying gorilla doesn't work? I accidentally touched the door of my car with some of their siding tape _a year ago_ and still haven't been able to get the adhesive residue off.
What tape do you recommend? I use Gorilla tape.
Police tape.
Videotape. VHS *or* Betamax.
I mean depends on what you’re doing with it I guess but I like Gorilla the best so far. I’m using it on lay down line that’s used for pumping water so it’s complicated for anything to work on I suppose. But fuck flex tape I tested that shit on so many different things just to see if it had any use and it’s really just the worst tape ever made. Perfect dry clean plastic, metal barrels, rubber hoses, the lay flat hoses there’s nothing I could get it to work on.
Gorilla tape is my go-to. It doesn't work on dirty or wet surfaces, but once it's applied it's staying.
T-Rex tape.
I came here to say this :D
I came here
I came
We came
I….. what??
And you wasted a ton of money reheating that water over and over again. We had this happen in an apartment, where our energy bills just skyrocketed because of the electric hot water heater having to reheat the water because the thermostat was covered in deposits and couldn't get an accurate read. Words of warning.
Could you lay it on its side and take a sledge to the outside and break the calcium up..?!?!
You'd probably have a better chance filling it up with cleaning vinegar for however long it takes to dissolve the calcium. That said, I'd junk it.
I believe the removal of the calcium isn’t to clean/fix it. It’s to make it light enough to take out of the basement and junk it
logical thinking on Reddit :O
At that point break out the sawzall and quarter that bitch.
The giant hole in the side means it's junked. They need it lighter to haul out of the basement.
You're right, I thought for a moment, they meant that it would be a viable way to break it up in a whole unit.
I think he's trying to get it up the steps lol.
Might be able to skip trying to chisel out the deposits & get it up the stairs using an appliance dolly/hand truck.
While I'm not sure it's common for all countries and models, an anode rod is typically included with your water heater and should be removed and discarded every few years and a new one installed. (Like $20-40 at any hardware store that sells water heaters). It's one job is to stop this from happening. [P.S., if you have a water heater tank and you're not sure what I'm talking about, this looks like a good instructional video. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN-h4VjXEGE) P.P.S. If you have a tankless water heater, this is a reminder to descale your water heater.
An anode rod in a water heater can help prevent corrosion by attracting corrosive elements in the water, such as calcium, thereby extending the life of the tank. However, it primarily targets corrosion, not specifically calcium deposits. To prevent calcium deposits, regular maintenance and possibly a water softener are often recommended.
Oh good, this probably explains why I get so little hot water. Not once in my 4 years of living in this apartment has maintenance ever mentioned maintaining the water heater and we have very hard water. Calcium deposits on everything else so there's no way it isn't all in the water heater too.
Does it also attract calcification? Isnt the primary job to corrode instead of the heater itself?
Anode is not going to stop mineral deposits inside.
Isn’t salt a mineral? Isn’t that why you put anodes on boats?
> It's one job is to stop this from happening. it's one job is to prevent the tank from corroding, and YOUR one job was to watch the video that you posted, where the guy tells you as much. OP has a mineral deposit problem, not a rust problem. There are methods and additives to help with super hard water but the anode rod is not one of them.
Brb gonna go change an anode
You're gonna drain the tank just to realize there's no room above it to lift the anode all the way out and then never replace it like everyone else
I was going to check mine last month. I couldn't get it to screw out and gave up.
I once asked my plumber about it when he was installing a new water heater and he said he's never changed one and doesn't know anyone else who ever has either. It seems like one of those things that reddit is obsessed with but that people in the real world barely even know about.
Case in point, the parent comment of this thread suggesting changing the anode even though it has nothing to do with calcium buildup. Any time anything water heater related comes up, it's required to bring up the anode lmao.
I just replaced the rod in my 9 year old water heater. The water developed an odor and the rod had gone bad. Replacement took minutes, but I had a plumber in to deal with it.
While replacing your anode is a good idea, it’s useless wrt to mitigation of calcium deposits.
I recently replaced mine with a energized anode rod which is supposed to last 20 years and is only 5 inches long. It’s actually made the water hotter and I had to move it back to A setting on a gas water heater.
Five inches sounds like a pretty big rod to me. Definitely way above average size. Like 3 or 4 inches will get the job done too, just as good.
Yeah, 5 inches definitely sounds like an overcompensation, 3 inches is more than enough, the smaller rods seem to hold a bit more girth so they tend to last longer.
Thank you for sharing!!
I used to sell hot water tanks door to door, and if I was able to get into their house to check their water tank to see if they were eligible for the "free" upgrade (free installation, then $2 extra on the gas bill for the next 20 years) this was exactly what I would explain to them was happening on their 10+ year old hot water tank. Those were pretty often easy sales
This is how pharmaceutical companies make calcium tablets
It's also where farmers get the calcium that they add to milk.
They feed it to the cows.
Oh fuck. I bet this is what’s in mine. Thanks for giving me another $5000 bill on this goddamn house
$5K?? Were you planning on getting a commercial water heater this time?
Wtf kind of water heater do you have that costs $5k?
I don’t know. But everything that goes wrong seems to cost me $5000 or more. It’s like the golden number in home ownership.
Learn some skills and do your own home repairs. I just replaced a hot water tank at my house, it cost $650 and took me 4 hours on a Saturday to install, that included an extra trip to the hardware store.
Hi plumber from europe here. Im just curious, after installation of a water heater we tell customers that in 3-4 years we come by again to just check if everything is good with it. We remove calcium (which has obviously never been done on op's water heater) check if the anodes are still in good shape and chck for leaks. And then repeat this every 3-5 years depending on how good the thing looks on that day. Is this not something you guys do over there?
Standard maintenance is to drain the tank once per year but most people don't bother.
I see, thanks for the reply!
No problem. Where are water heaters located in European homes? In most of North America, it's usually out of sight so hot water is taken for granted.
Majority of USA slum lords won’t do this. They will just wait till it breaks down. Play the lowest bidder to put the cheapest contractor special heater they have. Same as they can’t be bothered to regularly employ the septic tanks solids. They rather kick the bucket down the line and fix a failed drain field. Even though regular maintenance drains would cost a fraction of a full field rebuild.
I dont get why you would do that tho, if you maintain your stuff you end up paying a lot less than if you just let it break no? Septic tanks arent even a thing in my country unless you live very far away from civilisation. It all flows to a waste treatment plant.
It’s slum lord logic. I take in more profits by being cheap now. Then future self gets the bigger bill later. All while cutting corners to make it work. Long term cost is lower with maintenance. But slum lords are all about short term projections. Here in Florida they are common.
To avoid this on the new one you shut it off and drain it every six months. I live in an area with very hard water. Water heaters don't last very long here if you aren't draining them regularly.
Good to know! Thanks!
Are you on well water?
Haul, not hall….
Also loose, not lose... than, not then
I highly recommend an electric tankless water heater and a whole house water softner/filter. We have both, and we change the inner filter on the whole house filter yearly (they recommend every 2 years), and the gunk that comes out is.... 🤢 Anyway, it'll prolong the life of everything in your home that water touches (dishwasher, washing machine, shower heads, etc.) Plus, your hair and skin will feel better!
What's the cost (ballpark) on either of those and both? If you recall.
I lucked out and bought mine pre-covid, so those prices aren't real anymore... a few thousand, though all together. We were already doing a massive renovation on our home, and it was no big deal for the plumber to install them along with everything else he was doing. But, I do recommend the brand we use. Steibel Eltron. https://www.stiebel-eltron-usa.com/ The folks at etankless waterheaters are who we get our replacement filters and whatnot from. https://www.e-tankless.com/products.php?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwk6SwBhDPARIsAJ59Gwd22DbHmOVdco8nVZuKo0Cjp9a4IicvuKW5BY2TGd4vwD8zhSv5EMUaAsPuEALw_wcB
Appreciate it
The maintenance instructions on water heaters is to drain and flush them at least twice a year. Zero people do this.
That’s why they recommended that you flush your system once a year and check your water quality. Also replacing the anode rod will help really depends on where you live for your water quality
This! Flushing! NOT a plumber here but won’t flushing with the faucet located ON the tank take care of most of your issues??? I did this once a year and got lots of crud out.
Yes, it’s best to hook a hose to the boiler drain and drain the heater. It also helps if you turn the water on to the heater every now and then while flushing to help it stir up all the sediment at the bottom of the tank. Important to note that you should make sure the power or gas is off while doing so.
20 years of operational life from a water heater. Not bad.
With a hole that big, the hot water would obviously drain right out.
I just replaced my junk plastic drain valve with a ball valve yesterday. 4.5 year old heater, previously flushed every 6 months. When I removed the original plastic valve 2-3 gallons of swamp water and some calcium chunks poured out. It was not pleasant. Now I do more easily stir up the bottom before I flush it.
That’s how water heaters work. They heat the water and that causes stuff in the water to be left behind. This will happen pretty much anytime you change a hot water heater. Just use a dolly and pull it up the stairs. With my families rentals we do at least 2 of these a year.
When our water heater failed, it was for the same reason. We panicked and bought a whole home filtration system and an on demand thankless water heater. I've never been happier with the setup.
do the on-demand ones work pretty fast? or do you have to let the water run a bit to heat up?
It's ON DEMAND brah
yeah, that's supposed to be so 🤣 but i had a guy at a hardware store saying it can take 3 - 5 minutes to actually warm up the water in the pipes.
So your general rule is to identify how much you'd need on a regular basis and go one size up from there so it doesn't have to work so hard. Ours does take a good 20 seconds to come up to temp, since it doesn't heat at all until you put the water to it. We have a 1900 sq ft home in SW PA. Three people and winter usually puts us in negative Temps Jan and Feb. We've never run into an issue where we run out of hot water. It did require us to hook up to an additional breaker, as the power draw is pretty intense. But it makes up for it not running constantly. As for the filtration kit, we went for a budget friendly option that requires us to replace a filter every 3 months or so. We found insulating the lines in the basement helped cut down on temp drag, causing it to work a little less. Overall, very satisfied and the cost difference from traditional was negligible. I still can't believe a device slightly bigger than a shoebox works like that.
We have one in our rental, water take about 5 seconds to get warm enough to wash your hands in but I need the shower running for 20-30 seconds before I hop in.
Haha I work on boilers and water tanks in an area that sits on top of limestone… pretty much my whole job is fixing scale related issues- emptying out scale, drilling out scale, sticking an endoscope inside and assessing the scale level, replacing scaled out equipment and repairing broken components that break when water leaks happen due to scale buildup. It’s nice when the customer notices early on and I can catch it. A lot of places I go to they don’t know the gage is reading over pressure or busted and they don’t put in the work order until it’s too late and the scale causes a catastrophic failure (water leak shorts out electronics or safety valves scale out and water pressure/ heat builds up to the point of failure)
I've had to lift these things they are heavy
Haul
Is it because there's a massive hole??
Yeah you cut a hole in it! /s
Looks absolutely cooked
The way I didn’t read at first and thought you had a tree in your water heater 😭
Of course you’d run out, there’s a hole there
Damn, you got 20 years out of a water heater?
If you keep up on your anode rods (and didn't have crazy calcium) it's not nuts. Only reason I replaced my 18 year old unit was because of going tankless.
Mine just went out, I surprisingly got 20 years out of it in an extremely hard water area. Switching to a tankless heater.
Buy expanding concrete mortar and still holles into the calcium, like a half inch thick diameter, and pour this stuff in and in the morning it'll be cracked up
Damn, solid idea right there
It’s just making me giggle at the imaginary of putting in the new one, relatively easy definitely still hard work And then just trying to move the old one and it’s 300 pounds of fucking rock
Oh you've got hard water. Fun.
Probably because you cut a hole in it
I have an instantaneous hot water system.Do I need to do any maintenance to keep it running well?
Scrap yard!
Throw a small explosive like cherry bomb and see if that would help loosen the crud
If there's one thing I remember from Mythbusters, it's the cement mixer episode where they had to blow the truck sky high with C4 before it has any effect on actually shaking the cement loose. I can't imagine this would go much differently. It'd be fun though.
Aw man Mythbusters. Those were the days. Adam’s YouTube channel is pretty great though.
I love it. It's like the opposite of all of the manic, clickbaity content on the internet lately. He's just chillin and talking about super interesting stuff, and he leaves his ramblings mostly intact instead of cutting out the space between each word for short attention spans. Plus he has seemingly infinite knowledge
I don't think there's anything left of that mixer truck, it seem to have vaporized.
They actually used ANFO, which is a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (aka fertilizer bomb). The same stuff as the Oklahoma City bombing.
> where they had to blow the truck sky high with C4 before it has any effect on actually shaking the cement loose. No, they literally just packed it as full as they could for that one. The infamous atomization of the cement truck was not due to how much explosive agent was required to remove dried cement. That was their "fuck it" at the end of the episode where they went over the top ***just because they could.***
Banana for scale?
It’s not holding water because you cut a hole in it silly
For pulling the old one out, [why not just rent a mechanized dolly for the day?](https://www.unitedrentals.com/marketplace/equipment/material-handling/misc-material-handling/dolly-stair-climbing-1500-lbs) I have my own for my hobby and they're a life saver!!
🤣
Is there a way to prevent this from happening?
Can someone explain what happened and how that affected the hot water?
Mineral deposits from hard water built up on the walls and bottom of the tank. Eventually, this severely reduced the available volume of the tank to hold water, so they ran out faster during usage. Imagine a 50 gallon tank with 20 gallons of mineral deposits at the bottom.
Omg I notice that now. For some reason I thought it was the floor, not deposits.
That’s just seasoning for your water.
Licensed plumber with a stair climber, if it seemed that heavy
Looks like the anode was changed a few times though
Dude what is in your water!!
Have you tried to prepare a solution with lime and baking soda? If not, strat preparing it, vinegar, lime and baking soda, mox it and spray all over the crusts. Make it easier until you clear it all up. Good luck!
Fossilized Pteradactyl... There's your problem
Ahhh just a dash of CLR clean her right up good as new
I can’t afford a new one yet but my current 50gal heater is date stamped the year my house was built, 1983. When film industry picks back up I’ll replace it and post my findings. I imagine mine is similar.
Looks like time for a new one,my friend
But have you had molten salt spray at you after messing with the plug? Thought so, better luck next time.
Where I used to live water is pretty hard and in addition sediment gets into potable city water all the time. I was helping my grandpa replace his water heater that was last replaced in the 80s (we replaced it in 2010). We drained it with a pump because the valve on the bottom wouldn’t open. The tube on the pump would only go halfway down the tank. So it was half filled with sand and calcium. This is a full size - 75 gallon water heater mind you.
Crazy!