On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 07:53:19 -0600, Trekking Tom wrote:

On 6 Nov 2005 07:48:19 -0800, "scale" wrote:

I know this has been asked 1000 times and i researched it a bit but
couldnt come up with any real useful opinions.

Im in the market for a new 40gal water heater and am looking for
opinions on brands.....what is good and what is not so good. I dont
want to break the bank but i dont want flooded basement in 5 years
either


The drain pans you describe are for when the wh is installed above a
finsihed area.

That may be where they are required, or where they are always used,
but they seem to me to be a good idea even for an unfinished basement.

One usually has slight leaking before the major leaking, but in my
case, another leak caused the basement to be wet already, and I just
thought it was drying unusuallly slowly. The big leak took me totally
by surprise..

But I could have been on vacation for two weeks, or just not gone down
to the basement for two weeks, and the big leak would have gone all
over the floor and into the finished next room, damaging the floor
tile and getting sucked up by the rug and the boxes on the floor of
the closet, like it did.

The next big WH leak will never overflow the pan**, and I'll know
about the leak when I have no hot water. That's good enough and
preferable to having another wet basement.

**It has 1 1/2 or 2" pipe going straight to the sump and its pump.

It sounds like you have an electric wh, I prefer gas,

I would like to have gas too, but ny n'hood doesn't have it.

cheaper to run and faster recovery. When I do an install I make sure
to use Dielectric unions First joint after the heater on both the hot
& cold lines. I also prefer glass lined and foam insulated

Tom


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