We knew when we bought the house that the water heaters were getting up there in years–one is nearing 10 and the other about 13. I say “about,” as a few weeks back we noticed the water heater that serves the north side of the house was starting to hiss a lot. I did a bit of research and decided to call a water heater specialist that took over the business that installed the one we had (Just Water Heaters in case you’re interested). So the guy came out, I got a quote, Agent Smith and I talked it over, and then I called them back to schedule.
You may have noticed that the water heater in the picture is very large and has a lot of crud at the bottom. Turns out the POs had an 80-gallon water heater installed. Why? We have no clue; as far as we know, it was just three people living here and at the time they had the water heater installed, the third person was all of 4 or 5 years old. (Reminder: these are the same people who probably thought a cute little insulating jacket over the water heater actually serves some purpose (pic 1 below). It was a good thing we called though, as the tank was failing in many ways; once the insulation surrounding the ingress and egress pipes were removed, we discovered just how dire things were.)
When the technician wanted to drain the old heater, he ran into a problem. Remember all the crud and sediment that was in the bottom of the old well tank and then in the water softener and its filters? More of it was clogging up the release valve of the water heater. Add to this the POs thinking it was a good thing to have a plastic valve, and there was much worrying about water damage to the teak flooring just outside the water closet. The tech put together a replacement fitting and laid down several layers of waterproof drop cloths. Working quickly, he swapped out the valves and no mess was made (pic 3). Then it was a simple matter of draining the old tank, pulling it out and putting in the nice new 50-gallon unit (pic 4).
We can’t run a drain just yet to the outside, since that requires drilling through the floor into the crawl space and there is no easy egress point, but if and when we redo the north side bathroom drains, we will remedy that. He did place a pan under the new unit with a drain should we need it, though.
This is one somewhat unexpected project that actually went smoothly, and in the end saved us from a future disaster. Sometimes things like that do happen here!