Replace Your Water Heater Yourself in 10 Easy Steps

you can save hundreds of dollars by replacing your water heater yourself in just nine simple steps i'm at my buddy scott's house and his 40 gallon water heater has started to leak and so it's time to replace it it's been eight or nine years and we're going to replace it with a 50 gallon water heater that is almost the exact same size so if at all possible see if you can get a new one that's just about the same size and that'll make the rest of these steps much easier step one is to turn off the water heater close the gas valve and close the cold water valve in most cases if the valve is parallel to the line that means it's open if it's perpendicular that means the valve is closed so we want to get these all perpendicular to their lines and then just make sure that the actual water heater itself is set to the pilot or off position step number two is to open the nearest hot water source and then attach a hose to the tank drain and slowly open it letting all of the water drain out if you have a floor drain that's a great place to drain out your water heater tank if not you can drain it outside or if it's an elevated water heater you may need to drain it into a bucket but keep letting that drain until it's all the way empty and then close that drain valve once again step three is to disconnect your incoming and outgoing water lines on the top with a pipe wrench or channel locks if you have fixed copper pipes it might actually be easiest to cut those pipes using a small pipe cutter like this you can then use shark bite fittings to attach flexible lines for the new water heater this is going to make life a whole lot easier both for this install and for any future work that happens in this area step 4 is to disconnect the gas line the vent earthquake straps and anything else that you need to on the gas line itself you will often have two little pieces there's an adapter piece oftentimes in here that needs to come out as well and that will likely have what's called pipe dope on it so keep that in mind but you want to hang on to that most likely the vent hood is usually just connected with two or four screws and then make sure to get those earthquake straps off there as well if your heater has a temperature and pressure release valve like this one or a tpr valve then be sure to unthread the pipe from that as well we can typically reuse that in the new water heater step five is to remove the old water heater and replace it with the new to remove it just walk it carefully out being mindful of your gas lines and other lines your vent everything in there the last thing we want to do is pinch or crimp any of these lines in such a way that we have to replace them or fix them water heaters aren't typically all that heavy they are a little awkward however so it's a good idea to have two people to help with this and again just be real careful as you're walking the new one back in the last thing we want to do is cause more problems or more issues here step six is to attach everything back up starting with the incoming and outgoing water lines for these we're going to use teflon tape when using teflon tape i like to put about three rotations on there and also make sure to apply it in a clockwise direction as you're looking down on the opening this makes it so that as you tighten the new line onto the male portion it's going to tighten that tape down rather than try to lift it up and work against it with our water lines in place we can now attach the gas line and just as i showed before you may need to use the little adapter piece but you want to make sure to apply what's called pipe dope onto the end of your threads especially on the part that attaches into the new water heater once connected turn the gas on and then check for leaks the first way to do that is to give it a smell test put your nose right up to it give it a good smell and see if you smell any funky gas smells there if there's nothing there then you can move on to step two which is to spray soapy water onto all of the connections so just mix up some dish soap in some water spray it on there and then make sure to look for any bubbles that form and expand if you see that that means gas is leaking out in that case you want to make sure to tighten those down a little bit better and reapply pipe dope if necessary if not that means you're good to go and you can move on to step seven step seven is to reconnect the vent on top now many water heaters actually come with a vent connection that can replace the existing one using the self-tapping screws that you already had or sometimes they come with their own so make any adjustments necessary it may even be necessary to use some metal shears to shorten the pipes that are already there but the important thing here is to make sure that you maintain an upward angle from the water heater to the other end where it exits if you don't have that upward angle then the heat will not be able to escape and you're going to cause additional issues step 8 is to turn your hot water on in a sink that's far away from the water heater and then open your cold water supply for the water heater check for any dripping or leaking on the water connections both the incoming and outgoing and then tighten if necessary the sink that you've opened the hot water on will sputter and blow out air until the tank fills at which point it will start to stream out cold water and that's a good sign be sure to really take your time here and check all of your connections in our case for example even with the teflon tape in place we were still seeing leaking on the outgoing water line connection so we had to drain some water out of the tank disconnect the line and wrap a little bit more aggressively with teflon tape and then tighten it a little bit further than we did originally that did take care of the issue but we had to keep an eye on that so make sure there is no leaking no wet spots anything like that once you're sure that there's no water dripping anywhere let that tank fill all the way up until you see that nice stream coming out of the sink step nine with the tank full light the pilot on your new water heater and then set it to the desired temperature lighting instructions are almost always found right on the tank itself and you can use the view window to verify that it was successful in most cases all you need to do is turn your dial to the pilot setting push it in and then click on the pilot lighter button there's an indicator light on the control unit that will help you know if that worked before you finish up be sure to check that view window to make sure you're seeing the flames lighting up at the bottom of the water heater just remember that it can take up to about a half hour for the hot water to actually come out of the sinks there are two things that you can do to prolong the life of your new water heater and make it so that you don't have to do this again anytime soon the first one is just to flush your water heater ideally every six months just like we did in step two you can connect a hose and drain all the water out and what you're also doing hopefully is getting all of that sediment and calcium buildup getting all of that out of there too and you may want to flush it several times actually as part of this process but that's going to help keep the bottom of it clean and help the build up from accumulating in the bottom there the second and probably more important thing that you can do is replace what's called the anode rod on scott's water heater i was curious so we actually took a cut-off wheel and opened up the inside of the water heater to see how it looked and in general the tank was in fantastic condition actually but despite that this is an excellent reminder of how important that anode rod is the anode rods job is actually to take all of the damage all of the deterioration all of the corrosion and everything so that that doesn't happen to your water heater those inside walls of the tank are susceptible to all of that same deterioration and so if you replace your anode rod from time to time and typically it's recommended that you do this every three to five years it could make your water heater last for decades you can see on scots here that the anode rod is right down to just the inner core of it and there's pretty much nothing left it's completely gone and there's not even a sign of any of the thick stuff that used to be there as you can see this is what it used to look like or should look like pretty crazy unfortunately in my experience a lot of water heater manufacturers make it really difficult to remove the anode rod at all not just to remove as far as strength to undo the cap that goes on it but also giving you enough grip on it so that's a little pet peeve that i have because it's like they try to make them somewhat disposable unfortunately that might be a consideration when you're looking at new water heaters see if there's enough of a nut on top for a 1 1 16 socket to actually grab onto kind of frustrating in my opinion but it is what it is and with that you definitely need to move on to step 10 which is grabbing a cold beverage of choice maybe go out to eat and treat yourself because you just saved yourself hundreds of dollars in labor well done i'm nils with learn to diy thanks for watching

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 780,374

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: rnbLs35mKd0

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022