On Jan 22, 8:21*pm, mm wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:11:09 -0800 (PST), ransley

wrote:
On Jan 22, 3:00*pm, wrote:
I'm not sure but something is telling me that the water heater is
lined with porcelain. If the pipes were bent the porcelain is damaged.

Take it back, if you move the tank around you should hear loose stuff,
it is a glass lined tank, right.

Well, I didn't hear anything when I was moving the WH a lot taking it
home and down the stairs etc. *I cut open the previous one, and the
lining seems almost nothing like glass to me. *It's light brown, 1/16
inch thick, and the consistency of a plastic place mat for the
breakfast, but stiffer because it's thicker.

So there is no way the liner ould break, and I don't think the tank
dome could be crushed either, because it's semi-spherical, but
apparently the threaded hole where the nipple goes could be bent**.
But I don't think one bend could cause a leak in the metal, 1/16"
steel.

I can't see in the owner's manual that it is called "glass lined". I
don't have the patience right now to read it thoroughly, but maybe
they don't consider that vinyl-looking sheet to be glass.

I've only disected the top foot of the previous tank. Looking at it, I
was able to peel off the lining, and its strong. *No way could anyone
tear it to get it off the where the upper element or the T&P valve go.
I had to use Wizz compound tinsnips.

Then, suprisingly, it was wet underneath in parts, and in other parts
there were black spots almost the size of a penny. *It wasn't brown
like rust, but it still seemed like it was starting to rust or
something. *But no evidence of this on the outside of the tank. *I'm
going to tear apart the bottom more thoroughly, to find where the tank
leak in the old one was, but haven't done that yet.

The old one, although twelve years old, is almost identical to the new
one. The owners manual, (the text, the graphics, and everything), the
electric wiring, the arrangement of everything, the distance between
hot and cold, and the store (Sears) are all the same. *I think they
are made by A.O.Smith, like my original WH, but AOSmith doesn't sell
retail afaict.

** -- I just remembered that that is where the diptube is attached.
If the pipe going up is 1/4 inch off at 5 inches, at 50 or 55 inches
going down, it will be 2 1/2 inches off or a little more. *And the
tube makes a big circle at the bottowm for what they call Roto-Swirl,
which is supposed to stir the sediment around, although I can't
remember what the purpose of that is. *Of course I barely have any
sediment.

If you are trying to convince *us* that the dented WH is OK based on
your disection of the old one, you're seriously wasting more time than
you already have.

If you're trying to convince *yourself*, well, you really don't need
to do that in this newsgroup.