Hot Water Heater Install
Sep 7th, 2007 by Alex
It took us a few hours, but we successfully replaced my hot water heater with only one minor injury. I assisted my buddy with much of it; my soldering skills are horrible, but I was fine with the 240V line. It didn’t go quite a smoothly as we had planned, but the solder is holding and I had a hot shower this morning. The new model is a dual element model and should be more efficient than the old one. It’s got a six year warranty which is longer than I’m planning on being here. I didn’t have to hire a plumber or electrician. The whole project was completed for under $300 with some scrap materials remaining for the shop.
There was flooding.
We were in the process of cutting the cold water supply line. Water started spraying everywhere once the pipe was breached; the water showed no signs of abating, so much that the house shutoff valve had to be closed. There was 5-10 minutes of “holy shit” style panic when the water was spraying uncontrollably, but we contained it, cleaned up and continued the job.
There’s a bunch of stuff that you’ll need that is never included in the instructions.
- A garden hose, for emptying the old hot water heater.
- Five gallon buckets, because you never know. You can’t ever have too many of these. Home Depot sells than for a few bucks each.
- Large sponges, because you need to get water up fast. Paper towels are useless against standing water.
- Paper towels, to plug the open pipes while you’re working in the area below.
- A box fan, just in case water leaks into a large area and you need to dry things out. You don’t want to place a new piece of equipment on a wet patch of concrete. It’ll trap the water and mold/rust could form.
A learned a few lessons.
Shut off the water to the entire house before replacing a water heater. No you won’t have water. Suck it up. It’s better than having to manage a lot of water where you don’t want it. This assumes you know where your water shutoff valve is. I did, but there was some confusion between it and the sprinkler head fill valve in the panic. Make sure everything is labeled before you begin.
If you have a valve just before the hot water heater, never assume that it works. It turned out that the valve we thought worked didn’t. After we drained all the water from the house system and removed the old water heater, we experimented with the valve by letting a little fresh water into the system and testing the valve with a bucket underneath. No amount of turning in either direction stopped the water flow completely. Very irregular.
I should have known better on both counts, but its done now.
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