How To Flush & Clean an Atwood RV Water Heater

today we're going to show you how to drain and flush your RV hot water heater to help it last as long as possible this is an easy job that you should do once a year and requires very few tools you'll need some sort of wrench to get the drain plug or anode out of your hot water heater and you'll need a flush tool attached to the end of a garden hose along with some white vinegar the two most popular brands of RV hot water heater are suburban and Atwood suburban hot water heaters have an anode rod which is designed to allow minerals in the water to attack it and degrade rather than degrading the tank itself suburban hot water heaters have a steel tank so they are more susceptible to that and require and handout an Atwood hot water heater has an aluminum tank and doesn't come with an anode we have a suburban hot water heater in our new more motor home and we just recently did our annual flush of the hot water heater so rather than do it again our friends Patton Rita have been kind enough to let us borrow their motorhome to demonstrate it here on their Atwood hot water heater so that's the one we're going to use to show you today how to do it the first thing we want to do is make sure that we are disconnected from city water so there's no pressure in the lines and that our water pump is turned off we also want to make sure that there is no hot water in the tank so you don't get scalded when you remove the drain plug now this is our drain plug right here at the base of the hot water heater this is a nylon one if this were a suburban heater instead of a plug there there would be an anode rod now it would look the same on the outside because the only part of the anode rod that shows is the head of the bolt that holds it into the tank but when we take this out there won't be any anode rod attached to it this is just a plug let's start by releasing the pressure on the overflow valve up at the top here make sure there's no pressure and that's typical you're going to get pressure coming off the tank now when we remove the plug at the bottom it's not going to spray we've already let the pressure off the tank so let's remove that drain plug that's particularly easy to get out on an Atwood because it's nylon suburban anodes while they're made of magnesium have a steel thread and the thread on the tank itself is steel so they tend to rust in place and are much more difficult to get out this is a smart idea to use a nylon plug here instead so we're going to stand back and get ready for that to drain out we take that out of there and we'll just let that pulley drain now that all the water is drained out of the tank we want to flush it with our flush wand which we picked up at Camping World you're going to see that the tip of the wand is angled so that we can rotate it after we put it inside the tank to spray water all around the tank its cost about five bucks and we've had this for eight years very useful every year this gets here we're gonna stick that in the hole here right inside and turn on the valve and put it on full and start spraying we're going to want to rotate that around and you're going to see some white scale begin to come out of there just keep flushing that real well what we're doing is getting rid of the loose scale and any debris at the bottom of the tank you can see that there's a kind of a white milky color to this we're getting the real easy loose stuff out by doing this once the water is running pretty clear and we've gotten the majority of the loose debris out of there I'm going to put the plug back in and we're going to tighten it back down if you watched our recent video on how to sanitize your freshwater tank you know that we made use of this hose that is primarily designed to draw antifreeze into the freshwater system this time we're going to use it to put vinegar into our hot water tank to dissolve any scale that didn't come out when we flushed it and all we need to do on this RV is flip the diverter valve from normal operation to divert and then take the cap off the end of the hose this time instead of pulling bleach into our freshwater tank we're going to put vinegar into the hot water heater we're going to take our hose and put it down inside the vinegar bottle all the way to the bottom and you can see this neck is a little tight here I just had to take a little clip that holds the end cap on and slide it back out of the way now we're going to take that put it all the way down in and turn on the water pump now we want about a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water in the tank this is a 10 gallon tank so we're putting in approximately 5 gallons of vinegar 4 or 5 liter bottles close enough after you get all your vinegar into the tube we're going to fill one of the vinegar bottles of water the reason we're doing this is so that the last gallon we flush through the clear plastic tube is fresh water just so we clean any vinegar out of it now it's time to put the cap back on your hose and turn your diverter back to normal operation ok now it's time to turn the city water back on to the RV as soon as water begins to come out of your overflow valve you know the tank is full and you can close after you close your overflow valve you're going to hear water continuing to flow into the system from the city water to fill that's topping off your hot water heater and filling it up now let's turn on our hot water heater you can heat the water using either electric or a propane since we're fully hooked up here and we have electricity we're not going to use a propane to heat the water we'll go ahead and use electricity and we're going to let this sit now until this tank of water is completely hot well it sit for about an hour and by heating that up we're speeding up the process of dissolving that lime scale this is our water heater it's a 12 gallon suburban and as I mentioned the difference between Atwood and suburban hot water heaters is the anode and down here at the very bottom you can see ahead of that anode rod now this is not the one that came from the factory this is a replacement that we put in big difference in this is that the base of it this part all the way in the back is brass this is the original outside steel threading right here and this is a brass insert that goes into it and stays there permanently the first time we took out our anode one year after we bought the coach to do our annual maintenance and flush out the hot water heater we had a terrible time getting that anode out because the threads on it are steel and they were rusted to the steel of the hot water heater the way to solve that is to go and buy one of these replacement anodes it's made by the same company that makes the flush out wand and that is Northwest leisure product this is what the anode looks like outside the tank this is the whole thing and this is a replacement that I have we always keep a spare on board when you remove the anode you're probably going to find that instead of looking nice and clean and smooth and round like this one it's pitted and decayed and that's the purpose of the anode it's to sacrifice itself so that instead of corrosion attacking the steel tank it attacks the anode rod the anode that came with the hot water heater was made of magnesium and suburban offers the option of buying an aluminum replacement rod it depends on the water where you are if your magnesium rod decays too quickly and doesn't last an entire year you need to get an aluminum rod which lasts longest rod is 90% aluminum and 10% is zinc and zinc has the added benefit of reducing sulfur smell in the water what we would do to service this tank instead of removing the nylon plug like on the atwood heater we'd remove the anode this nut here is the anode inside the outer sleeve and that avoids the problem of the anode getting rusted in place because it's brass screwed into brass so you'll never need to worry about breaking loose a rusty fitting again once you put this replacement in make sure that you use white plumber's tape on your fitting after the water is fully heated turn off the water heater either wait overnight till the water cools or wear something to protect yourself from the hot water that's going to come out of here you're going to release the pressure on the overpressure valve just make sure you stand well clear when you pull on this because hot water is going to come jetting out of here so we're going to stand off to the side and that is a 50/50 mix vinegar and water I don't know if you can see the steam coming off there but it's plenty hot would be very careful if you're not going to wait overnight for that to cool once the hot vinegar and water mix has finished spring out of the pressure relief valve remove your drain plug again make sure again that you protect yourself from hot water wear protective gloves stand off to the side or wait till tomorrow now fully drain the tank again once the tank is done draining put your tank rinse connection back in and let's rinse the tank out again while you're rinsing the tank out you're probably going to want to rinse the ground off real well too because obviously it smells like vinegar out here we'll want to rinse the tank out a few times you really want to get all that vinegar out of there so I'm going to rinse this out at least two or three times just keep rinsing until the tank runs as clear as possible while the pressure relief valve on the tank is still open and the drain plug is still out turn on the city water feeding in to the RV this will just give it even more of a flush after a few minutes turn the water to the RV back off we can see that the last bit of water draining out of the tank is running clear we don't see any bits of limescale or sediment in here that's what we're looking for completely cleaned out not able to get any more debris out of the tank now you can reinstall your drain plug leave the pressure relief valve open which is in the straight out position turn the water to the RV back on we can hear the tank filling up and we're waiting for the water to come out through the pressure relief valve as soon as the water begins to come out the pressure relief valve which is going to take a couple of minutes for the tank to fill up there it is let it start coming out of there and then close it and just like before when we went to fill the tank with vinegar and water you can hear the tank is continuing to fill I can hear the water has stopped running and the tank is completely full now come inside the RV and run the water that's a warm what you're doing is running out from both the hot and cold water line any stray vinegars has gotten in the system and it will this is perfectly normal to happen it's going to foam up for a little bit let it run until you get all the vinegar all the bubbling all the foam out of the system and it may take a little bit to just let it keep running until it runs perfectly clear on all faucets same thing at the kitchen sink run it up on warm water to clear out any vinegar from both the hot and cold water lines now turn your hot water heater back on and you're good to go for another year

Channel: RVgeeks

Views: 447,848

Keywords: rinse, clean, flush, drain, motor, home, motorhome, bus, coach, rig, trailer, camper, 5th, fifth, wheel, camping, do, it, yourself, DIY, hot, water, demonstration

Id: IKg0R9oiMP0

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2011