How to Flush an Electric Water Heater | How to flush when changing the bottom water heater element

all right we're going to talk about water heaters draining water a subject that just makes a pain in my ass okay so hi i'm jim 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 gotta watch out he gets a little bit grumpy when he's giving advice so don't piss him off [Music] you know water heaters yes they probably have to be drained but what a waste of time because most people think when they put a garden hose on a water heater and then they turn the water on and all of a sudden they get a burst of of uh sediment coming out of the bottom of them they think wow look at what i did you know you've done nothing to drain or water heater properly you must remove that valve on the bottom drain it down then you must take a and back flush and i used to use a a sprayer that was made for boats it had a shutoff valve and i'd run it for three seconds and turn the water off and let that stuff come out and went back and forth until there was never any more sediment because when you drain it the other way all it does all the sediment four inches of say five six inches of sediment the bottom of that heater it's going to drain out the top part enough to make a like a canal in there and that's it you're not going to get the stuffs on the side in the middle of it you're not going to get it out of there electric water heaters now that's a different story most of the time when you have to change the lower element and and you're going to have a lot of sediment in there sometimes they don't come out real easy but you can try to clean as much as that sediment you cannot now the drain on the older style of electric heaters was a terrible drain it was like you couldn't get any flow through it at all but nowadays they put a ball valve on this ball valve doesn't have a very big opening probably about the size of a large pencil on it but the best thing you do is replace it with a a larger ball valve what we call a full port that's what standard equipment in the plumbing world are full port valves and that will give that's the same size coming in and going out of it and it's usually about three quarters of an inch is what you got to use and that will help get a lot of sediment out of it i'd like to show you this tool that i think is a good idea on cleaning gas and electric water heaters a gentleman told me about his video and i watched it and then he sent me this his cleaning thing and what you do is you put it into the drain of the water heater which pull the nipple out and you uh you screw it in and first you turn off your water when you turn off the water you screw this in and then you hook a hose to it and you turn the water back on and in a in a in a drill and as this thing moves around like this it'll break up that sediment flush it back out through the heater eventually it'll turn clear and you can see it because it's it's kind of a c2 plastic on it and i think this is a heck of an idea and it's called the turbo tank cleaner on this and you can google it and probably find it on youtube and get a hold of gentlemen and you know tell them i sent you you know so i think it's a great idea and the next thing i would like to talk about is the quality of water heaters i you know the quality of water here just do not have a life to it and i'm going to post on this video pictures of the supply house and two supply houses and how many water heaters that are in warranty that get brought back because they're leakers okay it's not because the people didn't drain them and clean them out they didn't last their six year warranties so they have to bring them back to the distributor and then he has to do all the work on it to get you know trade the water and get his money back on it but the quality is just not there i feel and i think the best next thing that you're gonna see is is these on demands you know they're easy to clean you can buy a kit that comes with a pump in the cleaning stuff or you can use vinegar and you it takes about an hour you circulate the vinegar or the cleaning material through it to clean it out they're easy to repair every connection on it is is like if you unplug a wire you can only plug back into that wire can't do anything else so but i mean most people don't want to do the maintenance but they are good if you need help like navian has uh face time with the water heater i hope you like what i've said about this and cleaning the heaters and the quality of the heaters but you know if you don't like it ask your mother [Music]

Channel: The Grumpy Plumber

Views: 19,759

Keywords: plumbing, plumbing advice, plumbing DIY, water heater, water heater flushing, how to flush a water heater, flushing electrical water heater, turbo tank cleaner

Id: ZWqEsgSGSPQ

Length: 4min 38sec (278 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021