On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:04:35 -0800, bob haller wrote:

On Feb 15, 8:50Â*am, Jules Richardson
wrote:
On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:02:22 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:35:21 -0600, Steve Barker
wrote:

All these nay sayers must be water heater salesmen. Â*LMAO! Â*The damn
dip tubes are flexible. Â*No overhead needed to replace. Â*If it's
REALLY REALLY tight against something, just drill a hole and drop it
through it. Â*duh.

But the biggest problems is getting out the tube breaking a 17 year
old fitting. Â*You do a job like that leaving enough time to go buy
and install a new unit when the corroded threads give way. Â*Or worse.

Agreed. Our (electric) tank is also 17 years old (maybe 16) - I had 6ft
of breaker bar on the bottom element trying to remove it last year and
there's no way it's coming out, and the drain valve (a plastic-bodied
piece of sh*t) is also stuck and I expect won't come out without
breaking (I wanted to replace it with something that wasn't designed by
a 5 year old)

cheers

Jules

plastic drain valves are designed to work ONCE, to drain the water at
end of life......

If they were a one-time deal they'd save a few cents and not fit them at
all, instead having a plastic seal that could be smashed to open the
tank.

they are not designed to be opened repeatedly.

Except when draining the tank in sites that aren't used over winter, or
when replacing heating elements.

all regular valves will get gunk stuck between washer and seat and the
small entry area will clog preventing big stuff from passing thru the
valve.

Exactly. It's a very poor design; the passage through the narrow body is
small, not straight, and has an angular cross-section. I'm struggling to
think of any way that it could be worse - and yet it seems to be standard
on all the tanks I've seen at HD etc.

I'll gladly fit a good valve myself when I eventually buy a new tank, I
just wish the tanks cost an extra few $$ and had them as standard.
Unfortunately on my ancient one the crappy valve is joined onto a short
piece of plastic pipe, which then joins to the tank somewhere on the
underside; if I try and remove it, there's a fair chance that it'll be
the pipe rather than the valve which fails - which would then mean
removing the whole tank to get access so I could fix it. That's more
trouble than it's worth (heck, I don't even know if the threads on the
tank-side of the plastic pipe are anything standard; there's no reason
that they have to be)

cheers

Jules