Water heater down.

PA DETAILER

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Took a dump this morning. Can't complain. 17 years on the current one! Rheam. Local plumbing outfit will be here shortly with the new one. Great they can do it on such a short notice!
 
Our old one sprouted a very small leak a few years back.
Small enough that the concrete below the water heater was getting damp and that spot was slowly getting bigger over the course of days, so it wasn't an emergency.

When I removed the old one, the inlet/outlet pipes were severely gunked up along with the drain spigot. I had to tip it on its side while using my wet vac to pull water out the top. When I finally got enough water out to lay it down, I had to remove the whole drain spigot (also gunked up) to clean it to be able to fully drain the water out through a hose. Our utility room is across the finished basement from the floor drain, so I couldn't just pour right into the floor, I had to run a garden hose from the spigot to the drain.
 
Ours is going on 15 years....electric....going propane tankless when it dies
 
Gas/hot water here. He arrived at 8. Working on it now.

One American Standard 40G tank installed. Along with a expansion tank added. Installer was very professional, and the install was clean. 3.5-hour job. You can't possibly ask for quicker service being this happened around 6:30 this morning.

One of life's unexpected expenses.
 
We bought our house in 2005 and I replaced the water heater in 2010/2011. Don't know how old that one was.

But at 12 or 13 years old, the one I put in will probably be screwing the pooch sooner than later.......
 
Mine is 30 yrs old this August, not had the first hint of trouble with it ( hope it doesnt start now---jynxed ). Never done nuthin to it except I flushed it one time about 15 yrs ago. Orig elements in it also.

Most all of you folks that dont live in Fl. dont pay much compared to us in homeowners insurance. The Govt lets these ins. companies sodomize us to no end. My insurance trippled over the last 6-7 yrs. Now when you go to look for other carriers they all want you to put on a new roof if its over 10 yrs old and replace the hot water heater if its older than 15. Forcing you in a sense to replace things that are perfectly fine. If it gets to much worse I will tell them to pound sand and go with out ins.
Good luck with your install PA
 
PA
How did the install go-- did you go electric or gas
 
Ours is going on 15 years....electric....going propane tankless when it dies

This is where we are too. We have a gas heater that was installed in the house when the house was built 14 years ago. It's still working fine, but we'll go tankless when this one dies.

We encountered tankless heaters in several places while living in Europe 20+ years ago. Loved the near instant and endless hot water.
 
This is where we are too. We have a gas heater that was installed in the house when the house was built 14 years ago. It's still working fine, but we'll go tankless when this one dies.

We encountered tankless heaters in several places while living in Europe 20+ years ago. Loved the near instant and endless hot water.
If the power goes out...no hot water though, or working stove if ya get rid of gas. Unless ya ot solar i rekon.

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PA glad ya got it swapped quickly. I replaced my gas hot water tank last summer. Wanted to go ventless but didnt sence we still had oir old furnace and waant showing any signs of puking.

Fast forward to november....bam our old ass furnace suddenly showed bad signs of cracked heat exchanger. Didnt have heat for a week due to it being unsafe. Only got down to 60 in the house. Cold but nothing like what im sure some folks have to li e with out there. Got new one installed a week later and its working great. Finally runnin a high efficiency furnace and will for the first time since living in this house we will have central air! No more fackin with window units each year. Wish i woukda bought a ventless hot water tank...damnn it lol

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Took a dump this morning. Can't complain. 17 years on the current one! Rheam. Local plumbing outfit will be here shortly with the new one. Great they can do it on such a short notice!

Why you dirty rotten €£*^%#

Within 30 minutes of reading this post I got this from my daughter

0c3ed6604e4736d66492ec95e3296351.jpg


Guess how I spent my Saturday morning

And I BLAME YOU!!!!




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Why you dirty rotten €£*^%#

Within 30 minutes of reading this post I got this from my daughter

0c3ed6604e4736d66492ec95e3296351.jpg


Guess how I spent my Saturday morning

And I BLAME YOU!!!!




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WOW! What are the odds? How old?
 
WOW! What are the odds? How old?

That's a sore subject with my daughter actually

They bought the house in late summer 2020 and one of the selling points was "new water heater, installed 06/2020"

Then a year later the igniter went south and she had to sort that out and turns out the heater was BUILT in 2009, but was installed as new in 2020

I don't know what the actual situation was, shenanigans or what, the sellers had the house for a couple of years and flipped it doing all the work themselves

There are a couple of "builder's bargains" stores in the area with odd lots and stuff, maybe they picked it up there, IDK

We went to Lowes and got a new heater and with my military discount it was about $475

Draining the old one took the most time as usual and my son in law helped wrestle the old one out and the new one in

All good

Carry on
 
If the power goes out...no hot water though, or working stove if ya get rid of gas. Unless ya ot solar i rekon.

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We have gas now for our furnace, water heater, and stove. That's not going anywhere and we'd go gas tankless if it comes to that. Not only for the reasons you mention, but around here gas is cheaper than electricity.

We had a solar water heater when we lived in Hawaii. It sucked. The water never really got as hot as we'd like for things like washing dishes or sometimes even bathing. When we lived there I had to go to work before the sun came up. Guess what? No sun, no hot water! Rainy days in the winter were bad that way too. There was an electric backup on the the unit, but you had to manually turn it on, it took forever to heat the tank, and the electricity for it was really expensive. Novel idea, but not practical at all.
 
So my daughter works for the municipal planning department

This morning at work she mentioned that she had to replace her water heater over the weekend

She immediately found out she needed a city permit to install or replace ANY gas appliance

Luckily they are ignoring what she told them

Talk about a crock of $&!@

Yeah, I get that 99% of the folks out there probably aren’t capable of installing something like that without blowing up a city block but damn…


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For you guys that want tankless, have you used one? I haven’t lived with one but I’ve been over to my parents house multiple times and a few other places and I find them to be slow to get hot water going. Maybe some homerun pex would help with that but I haven’t been impressed by the tankless installations I’ve experienced. On the flip side, we wouldn’t run out of water due to our 50 gallon tank when 4 people are taking showers in close succession.
 
For you guys that want tankless, have you used one? I haven’t lived with one but I’ve been over to my parents house multiple times and a few other places and I find them to be slow to get hot water going. Maybe some homerun pex would help with that but I haven’t been impressed by the tankless installations I’ve experienced. On the flip side, we wouldn’t run out of water due to our 50 gallon tank when 4 people are taking showers in close succession.

Replaced our water heater last winter as well (gas unit, shell was getting rusty and you could tell it had sediment build up inside with how it couldn't keep up). Unfortunately, somehow the jerk-olas that built the house managed to miss the part of building code where the gas hot water heater outlet has to be X feet away from the home air exchange inlet.

Having been bit in the past about trying to sell a house and finding out during city inspection that there were items not up to code when I bought the place (yet I had to fix them to sell it), plus not wanting to play fast and loose with that whole carbon monoxide thing, I did a bunch of looking at options for what to do. Reworking the water heater exhaust outlet would've required major tear apart of our finished basement, so decided to go electric. So far haven't been entirely impressed with it; even though it's a 50 gallon unit it doesn't seem to keep up as well as I was hoping (especially in winter with the colder water supply).

I looked at the tankless route. My understanding of it seemed like they actually plumb the house differently for a tankless vs traditional so it has a hot water circuit instead just terminating at your points of use. That way the light up time for hot water is reduced. Sound like the "Hot water sandwich" can be pretty common - Start hot tap, cold water. Warms up. Shut off tap. Open tap, water comes out cool until hot water catches back up. Again, this is just what I've read, so folks real life experience is likely different. Between that and the extra maintenance, I elected to stay traditional.

One thing I did do though is add a "Water Cop" brand automatic shut off valve. Both my wife and I have had water heater failures in the past that caused flooding damage, so to help minimize the risk I got the water cop. It's got 2 water sensors you put down on the ground (or in the water heater pan/etc). If they detect moisture, it cuts the water supply to the house (or wherever you have them install it). Been meaning to get some point of use ones for the washing machine upstairs and down under the dishwasher.
 
For you guys that want tankless, have you used one? I haven’t lived with one but I’ve been over to my parents house multiple times and a few other places and I find them to be slow to get hot water going. Maybe some homerun pex would help with that but I haven’t been impressed by the tankless installations I’ve experienced. On the flip side, we wouldn’t run out of water due to our 50 gallon tank when 4 people are taking showers in close succession.

We used them frequently when traveling in Europe.

Many of the BNB's we stayed in, especially in countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, had one in every guest bathroom rather than having to have a giant water heater to supply all the guest rooms and the rest of the landlords house too. I remember the water being hot pretty fast and it never ran out. Unlike at our house with a water heater, the hot water never ran out either. This was handy when our whole family was hitting the showers and one of my girls in line before me decided to hold a one-person concert and took forever. I didn't have to worry about getting stuck with a cold shower.

Many of the homes/apartments had them as well because they are efficient and take up far less space than a traditional water heater.
 
Our new house is going to have a gas fired tankless water heater

It will be our first experience with one

Our oldest son has one that doubles as the hydronic heating unit and he loves it


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