On Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:45:50 -0400, micky
wrote:

Is this perhaps a gas water heater? When I took my electric water
heater apart, it had a steel shell but inside that was a flexible
plastic of some sort, milky clear/white, with maybe glass embedded in
the plastic. It was 1/4" thick or more and was never going to break,
because I pulled it away from the metal and bend it 60 degrees and there
was no cracking.

It was sold by Sears but seemed identical to the one that was first in
the house, by A.O.Smith. (I'm not positive it's labeled glass-lined
but people make it sound like all of the tanks are.)

I wanted to check if my water heater was advertised as glass-lines, so I
started looking on the web. Then it dawned on me that a better way
would be to look on the water heater, which probably still has labels on
it. (Yes, it has several.)

And the top label includes "Cobalt Blue Ultra-Coat (or Cote) Glass
Lining." but I'll bet you any money that this Kenmore water heater is
built just the same as the last one, with the 1/4" (or slightly less,
not more like I said.) layer of clear/milky vinyl?, something like
plastic milk cartons would be if they were thicker, probably with glass
mixed in, because otherwise t hey couldn't say "glass lining". Or
maybe it's largely crushed glass in some "plastic" medium.

I think Kenmore is AOSmith because the intake and output pipes are
exactly the same distance apart as the wh that came with the house (when
no other brand I looked at had that. I'm compulsive. I didn't want to
use flexible and I didn't want zig-zag piping. ) And the front panels
were the same (although maybe they all use the same thermostats and
heaters.) Basically everything looks the same as the original.