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Water heaters need maintenance


Water heaters need maintenance

The three-year-old anode rod, right, shows the pockmarks and deterioration that proves it's working. It used to be the size and shape of the new anode, left.

Photograph by: Steve Maxwell , The Ottawa Citizen

Even diligent homeowners don't usually realize that water heater tanks need maintenance. Trust me, if you could only see inside your tank, you'd get busy right away. Except for brand-new tanks, there's almost certainly ugly sediment buildup at the bottom. This impairs heating action, it shortens the life of your heater, and it's gross.

Realizing that your morning shower water flows in and around this stuff should be enough to get anyone busy.

The source of the grunge is minerals in the water. Heating action causes them to precipitate out, and this is why an annual flush should be the first and most important maintenance step to getting the corruption out of your plumbing world.

At the bottom of every hot water tank there's a drain valve, and this is the only place where filth can leave the heater. Shut off the electricity or gas supply, shut off the water supplying the tank, then connect a garden hose to the bottom valve. Place the other end of this hose in the closest drain, open the drain valve, then turn on the water valve supplying the tank. As new water is added to the tank from the top, it leaves through the drain valve at the bottom, carrying a surprising amount of ugly stuff with it. This is the basic flushing process in a nutshell, and it should happen once a year. Just make sure no one is near the end of the hose as you work, in case it moves away from the drain, spraying scalding water as it does.

Water heater sediment is ugly, but appearance isn't the only reason flushing makes sense. Reducing energy costs and boosting the hot water capacity of your tank is the most important reason for flushing. The more minerals in the bottom of your tank, the less effectively your water heater will work. Flushing removes most of the sediment, and even though it won't remove all of it, getting 95 per cent is still worthwhile.

If your water heater has been neglected for years, expect a lot of gunk to come out. It's not unusual for four or five kilograms of crud to flush from high mileage heaters in hard water areas. To conserve energy and make the flushing process safer, I always shut the electricity off to our heater a day or so before flushing, allowing the hot water to be used up, rather than dumping it down the drain. And while you're busy with the water heater maintenance thing, consider doing something else that will also greatly extend the life of your heater.

As you'd expect, corrosion is a constant problem with any steel-tank water heater, but corrosion is lazy. It always attacks the easiest metal to corrode first. This is why every tank-style water heater is equipped with a long, replaceable rod of zinc inside. It's called an anode, and it's meant to be eaten away by corrosion so your tank won't be. Proper water heater maintenance involves removing the anode to see how it's doing, and replacing it after it's about half gone. You get at the anode from the top of the tank, and a 1 1/16-inch socket is standard for removing all water heater anodes in Canada.

Most tank-style water heaters are similar in design. You'll need to pry off a white plastic collar around the anode hex head to get the socket down onto it. Anode removal is a little beyond normal DIY tasks, but whether you do the job yourself or hire a pro, anode inspection and replacement is still a necessary part of optimizing water heater life. Just because it hardly ever happens doesn't mean it shouldn't be different at your place.


Original source article: Water heaters need maintenance
Clean your water heater


Photograph by: Steve Maxwell, The Ottawa Citizen

Clean your water heater
Clean your water heater

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