Common Pain in the Butt Electric Water Heater Problems

folks this is an electric water heater this is a 50 gallon electric and these things are a pain in the butt and i'm going to talk about it today hi i'm the grumpy plumber hi my dad jim has been a plumber for 48 years he's a master plumber in michigan and c36 licensed plumbing contractor in california usa my wife and i thousands of dollars but you just got to watch out he gets a little bit grumpy when he's giving advice so don't piss him off 50 gallon water heaters i get a lot of questions on electric water heaters and gas water heaters and everybody wants to know if they should drain it or not drain it well if any of them they're hard to drain don't let anybody kid you you just can't take this faucet down here on the bottom and open it up and expect all the junk that's inside that thing to come out you're crazy about if it is most people got to put a hose on then and they think they're draining it and you to drain it you've got to let air inside of this big tank so water can go out some people will open up a faucet that's a good idea you definitely don't want to open up the tmp valve over here on the side that uh we're going to move the camera here to show it to you this here is a tmp if you open it up it'll relieve the pressure on it on the bottom and uh then you can drain the heater but you got to lock it into position big thing i want to talk about is that they get a lot of sediment in and the first thing to burn out is that bottom element this is what it looks like on the inside you have an upper and a lower element this upper heat say about 75 of the water okay then when it's satisfied it kicks to the bottom element tend to use it and you only got water for a little bit usually that means that the bottom element is burned out so the lower part of this tank is not doesn't have hot water and this is where most of the sediment builds up is in the bottom of this and there's you know they claim they have a filled tube that can circulate the water and and so you don't have as much sediment but they don't usually work that well but when you have the element burned out that's a good time to clean it because if you take it and drain it right now you have to pull that thing off and that that doesn't let any sediment through that valve you know you always want to say the manufacturer menu drain why don't they put a valve on it that you can use a big full port valve we call that a globe valve so what's water you can't get through it has a little uh it has a seed ins our washer inside of it you can't get any sediment through it so it has to come completely off and about the time you go to take it off it's going to break off on you because they want to be cheap and they make it out of plastic but so not done bitching about that well the guy that's installing the water heater says you should drain this every so often but i'll bet you a hundred dollars that he does not remove that valve and put something on there that you could use you know to drain that water heater he you know he wants to come and do it why would you want somebody come and do it it's easy enough to turn on the faucet and turn it off that's because that's probably what he's going to do but you know if you don't believe what i say about these things ask your financial advisor maybe he's got a better idea thank you i'm the grumpy plumber [Music] you

Channel: The Grumpy Plumber

Views: 10,742

Keywords: plumbing, plumbing advice, plumbing DIY, electric water heater, electric water heater problems, water heater problems, flushing a water heater

Id: nZb48xpyj5k

Length: 3min 32sec (212 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022