FLUSHING A Water Heater The RIGHT WAY Step by Step

flushing a water heater the right way step by step now flushing a water heater is something that you need to do and today i'm going to show you how if you're new to the channel or even if you're not if you've been here before but you haven't done it yet please hit the subscribe button and ring the bell and if you know anybody that has a water heater make sure you share this video with them it can help them out make their water heater last longer and save them lots of money so flushing a water heater the right way why is it important well first of all as you get sediment buildup in the bottom of your water heater it actually lowers the efficiency rating so it's going to cost you more money and you're going to get less hot water what happens is the sediment normally builds up in in a gas water heater in the bottom of the tank even in an electric but it'll also build up on the elements and things like that so flushing the water heater on a regular basis can really save you some problems now if you've got a water heater that is say five or six years old i probably wouldn't flush it at that point if you have not started flushing it in the very beginning you don't want to start now because any microscopic cracks anything like that that may have got filled with the anode rod or may just be plugged up with sediment if you start flushing it now it could possibly make that happen so what i want you to think about is number one when did you have the water heater installed and if you're not sure you can always go down to the label check the serial number check the model number and do a little bit of research find out what brand it is this one is a bradford wyatt and and thanks to the people at bradford white for giving me this with the cutout i love showing people the inside of it like i said if it's over three or four years old i probably wouldn't flush it just because that sediment may actually be what's keeping it from leaking now make sure you hang around to the end because if you have a problem with your water heater draining what you're going to need it to do to flush i'm going to show you how to fix that problem too and it's a completely different deal so first of all what i recommend at this point is reaching up here and shutting off your cold water valve now this is a trainer we've got here in our shop as you see doesn't hold any water but normally on the cold water side your water line comes up goes back to the wall and there's a valve there hopefully it is a full port ball valve which means you grab that handle you rotate it 90 degrees if it's a gate valve i would be very cautious as to closing it but most plumbers aren't installing them anymore so i really doubt you're going to have that problem if it's a gas water heater go ahead and turn off the gas you can either turn it off here at the control valve which means you'll have to light it later or turn it down to vacation if you don't want to turn it off if you're not sure how to light it but anyway i try to turn it down because i don't want it firing up while i'm flushing now i'm one of these people i don't completely drain the water heater i like just flushing it with the city water pressure on so we'll get to that in a minute but after you've got the gas and the water shut down now what you want to do is you want to see if it's going to drain now once you've got the water off you want to make sure that there's nothing on anywhere in the house what i'm going to show you how to do is create a vapor lock to where you're just going to find out will the drain valve open now one thing i like about this water heater it has a metal drain valve a lot of them have gone to the plastic ones because they're cheaper i prefer a brass drain valve but i'm going to show you something that i do to it to also make it work a little bit different all right so after you've got the water and the gas off you're going to need a screwdriver or if you've got a plastic valve you're just going to rotate the handle so what you're going to do is you're going to come down here and you're going to hook up a garden hose in a minute but what i want you to do first is actually put a towel down here because what i want you to do is crack this open and see how water comes out now you've got a vapor lock on it so it shouldn't come pouring out as long as all the hot water faucets are shut through the house now i want you to crack this open and see if this is going to drain if you've got water coming out you're probably okay go ahead and close it back now if you're not 100 sure if it's just trickling out a little bit go ahead and close it back anyway hook your garden hose up at this point now what i want to want you to do remember this is a hose thread so you're going to hook your garden hose up you're going to run it outside to a safe area now i like running it into a bucket so i can see what kind of sediment appears i've actually even taken a white t-shirt put it over a bucket cut holes in the bottom that way i could just flow the hose through it and see if i was getting any calcium magnesium any kind of stuff like that that's actually the build up that you're going to get in here so if you've cracked it open you know it's going to flow good you're fine at this point go ahead and open your valve back up you don't have a lot of pressure on it because we don't have the water on yet so now at that point you've got everything done you want to turn on your cold water valve so now that you've got your hose hooked up you've got somebody watching it everything's fine you want to reach up here and open your valve up now your water heater should sound like water is really flowing through it long as you hear that everything's going good what i would do at that point is go outside to the valve watch it and see how good is it coming out and look at your sediment are you actually getting sediment out of it that's where i like running it through a t-shirt or something like that then i can just see what's there but that's about all it takes really it should take five or ten minutes to get most of the sediment out you can let it run longer it's up to you if you're still getting sediment let it keep running if you're not come back in shut your drain valve you can leave the valve on up here shut the drain valve disconnect your hose and carry it out but if it's not coming out fast or if it's not draining at all now we're going to get down here and i'm going to show you what you can do next okay so say you open the valve and it's not draining very well one thing that i would do at that point is go ahead and close it close the valve keep the towel under it go ahead and disconnect your hose get it out of the way now most plumbers will use a piece of silver solder anything that they've got on their truck we normally don't carry clothes hangers around but what you're going to do then is open this valve back up and stick your wire up in there to see if you can unclog anything a lot of times just poking around in here you can break up enough sediment that you'll get it draining down so you may want to hold the towel up you may want to hold the rag up that way if water does start coming up pretty good you can kind of cover it up and then reach up and just close it again but sometimes doing this just sticking that wire in there will break up any sediment that's down by the drain valve because that is actually the lowest point on the inside of the water heater so anyway that's a great thing to try now if you can't get it in if you can't get that to work if you can't get it to drain here's another option now this is one you want to be a little careful with but it's something you can do go get a three-quarter inch brass nipple about three or four inches long they make a three-quarter inch full port ball valve that has female threads on one end and male hose threads on the other that's what i would love to have and that's what i actually like to replace these with the reason is that the full port ball valve is going to make it drain faster it's full size most of these openings in these little drain valves are about 3 8 of an inch so that's going to hinder everything it's going to slow it down so if i could not get it to unclog or it was still draining really slow what i would do is close the valve again go ahead and get down here and loosen this up now when you loosen it up a little bit of water is going to come out just be ready for it have your rag ready if you've got your brass nipple and the valve already have it put together teflon tape and pipe dope so you don't have any leaks start unscrewing this and remember keep your rag closed because when you pull this out you're going to get some water out of here but as soon as you get this out have the next one ready to go right back in there and then tighten it up now one thing that you may do whenever you pull it out if it's not draining very fast again go ahead and take this wire you've opened that up now so you've got a little bit more room get in there and see what you can do to get it cleaned out then put everything back together now you want to be very careful doing this because remember this is hot water if you're afraid that you're going to have to change this out you may want to go ahead and open the valve up in there and go run the hot water for a while to help everything cool down but once you get everything back in and put back together check it out make sure that there's not any leaks and this should take care of everything for you now if you change your valve out you're still going to have to hook the hose up and run it open your cold water valve on the top to help it flush out really good but that will help you flush this water heater out really really well so flushing a water heater the right way step by step can save you a lot of money here's why plumbers normally get 250 to 500 to come out spend the time to flush this and do it right they're gonna make good money but as a homeowner this is something that you can do as a plumber if this is something that you're not recommending to your customers you really should be especially when you sell them a new water heater you should be coming back every year servicing that to make sure that they don't get build up as a homeowner here's why this is important if you don't get a sediment buildup in there it's going to make your water heater more efficient it's going to last you longer you're going to have more hot water for longer periods of time if you're a homeowner and you flush your own water heater do me a favor and leave me a comment down below and let me know what do you think about it do you do it the way i do do you do it any different some people tell you to turn the water off disconnect it and drain all the water out i don't like doing that because of the thermal expansion of the tank i think once the tank gets cold and then gets hot again it shrinks it gets big i think you put too much stress on the tank and you can actually cause cracks that you don't want to have leaking later i'm roger wakefield lead ap the expert plumber i'll see you in the next video if you don't get flushed

Channel: Roger Wakefield Plumbing Education

Views: 195,551

Keywords: FLUSHING a Water Heater The RIGHT WAY Step by Step, water heater flush, how to flush a water heater, flush water heater, how to flush out a water heater, how to flush a water heater of sediment, how to flush a water heater tank, water heater maintenance, how to flush a water heater step by step, how to flush out a gas hot water heater, electric water heater flushing, how to flush a water heater video, diy water heater flush, diy plumbing, flush hot water heater, water heater 101

Id: tgkJ2-kHSd0

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022