Ken Hall wrote:
I've just had a new water heater installed and I have some questions.

Question 1:
I read you should replace the cheesy plastic drain cock with a ball
valve so you can get full flow when draining the heater. But,
there's
some kind of safety cover over the drain cock that prevents putting
ball valves (which are larger) on them. So, if you can't do it, why
is it recommended?

Question 2:
This is a self-cleaning unit. Do you drain self cleaning units? Is
so, doesn't that mean they're not self cleaning?

Question 3:
My old unit had begun to leak. It's in the attic and I REALLY didn't
want a sudden dump, so I turned off the supply valve at the heater,
connected a garden hose, opened a couple of hot water faucets and
drained it. I left the hose connected. When the plumber arrived left
it connected saying it still needed to be drained. I asked him why
and he said, "You can't drain it without opening a water connection
at
the unit." Sure enough when he cracked open one of the connections a
lot more water drained out. Why does a connection at the heater
have to be opened to get it to drain completely?

Question 4:
I would like to be able to replace the anode in a few years, but when
I've tried to remove anodes on heaters in the past I simply couldn't
get them to come loose (unscrew). Would it be better to remove it
now
while it's new, and put some Teflon tape or something on it to make
it
easier later?

Ken

Did you ever consider a tankless water heater? They are not alot ($ up
front) more than a good tank style heater but alot less maintenance as
well as a heck of alot cheeper to run. No tank draining, No TPR valve,
No tank to rot out, No anode to change. All around a better deal. In
europe Tank style heaters are considered antque. almost all houses
there are built new with tankless heaters. Just something to think
about.

"briz" wrote:

Did you ever consider a tankless water heater? They are not alot ($ up
front) more than a good tank style heater but alot less maintenance as
well as a heck of alot cheeper to run.

Sorry, they are considerably more expensive than a storage tank heater.
Especially in a retrofit situation, but even in new construction.

No tank draining,

How often exactly to you drain your storage heater? Excluding vacation homes
(where all the plumbing would need to be drained) the only time I've ever done
it is when I replaced a 20 year old unit.

No TPR valve,

I've never had to replace one.

No tank to rot out,

Modern storage tank heaters are glass lined and self cleaning. If you don't get
a minimum of 20 years use out of one, you aren't trying.

No anode to change.

WTF???? If you are changing anodes on a residential water heater, you have far
more problems with the rest of your household plumbing that you need to be
worrying about.

All around a better deal.

You don't really have any experience with tankless heaters, do you?

In europe Tank style heaters are considered antque. almost all houses
there are built new with tankless heaters.

No, in Europe they have a lot of older housing stock with construction that
makes it difficult to run insulated hot water lines. There are other factors
that come into play as well.

Most of the new residential housing I've seen in the UK uses storage tanks.
Here's an example:

http://www.primelocation.com/new-homes/browse/all/uk/england/essex/chelmsford/BIca213721/

Go down to the plumbing section and note the words: "Each apartment includes an
insulated hot water cylinder, with electric emersion heater back-up." A Google
search on "hot water cylinder" will yield many other references.

Just something to think about.

And if you would like some factual information, you can download this study:

http://www.stateind.com/new/Tankless_WhitePaper.pdf

State builds both types of heaters, so they have no particular reason to favor
one type over another.

The bottom line is that except for a few specific circumstances, storage tank
heaters are cheaper to install and operate over a given period of time than
tankless.

On Fri, 06 May 2005 16:59:15 -0600, someone wrote:

The bottom line is that except for a few specific circumstances, storage tank
heaters are cheaper to install and operate over a given period of time than
tankless.

And that makes a LOT of sense in general principle. To get tankless
to work, you are installing a HUGE capacity heater, that will only run
for minutes a day. Waster capacity. And then it is way oversized for
low flow situations.

OTOH, using a tank, you run a much smaller heating element, just for
longer periods. And you store the warmed water. The relevant balance
would be between the cost of the storage loss, and the cost of the
huge capacity heater unit. In "normal" use where hot water is used at
various times of each day, apparently a storage tank does pretty well.

BTW, in Europe, often energy costs are higher due to tax structure,
and people are apparently willing to put up with more (living with the
limitations of a tankless unit's performance characteritics) for
economy. Hey, in Europe, manual transmission in cars are much more
common. In the US we tend to have relatively luxurious housing, even
of our total incomes are no longer the envy of the world.


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