Hey guys I am Roger Wakefield, LEED AP, The Expert Plumber, coming to you this
morning to talk to you about water heaters gas. Now the other day we talked
about electric water heaters and there's a lot of common parts. So I kind of want
to talk to you about them and tell you about them just to kind of let you know.
A lot of your common parts are the valve on top: the T&P valve, the temperature and
pressure-relief valve. Guys, your valve on top,
hopefully it's a quarter-turn ball valve. If it's a gate valve we recommend that
people don't turn it and operate it too close your hot water off that way. In an
emergency it really won't matter. But just to do it to see if it turns your
water off, a lot of those little gate valves, the spiral on the inside that
makes that disk go up and down, if you tighten that down too much you'll
ruin the brass on the bottom and it may not open back up to where you can turn
your water back on. So that's a problem that we ran into. We tell our guys: look
if it's a gate valve, don't operate it. Recommend they replace to a full quart -
full turn... or quarter-turn full port ball valve. Guys a ball valve is a great thing
to have on your water heater, it makes turning off your water very simple to do.
The other things up on top are your dielectric unions and your dielectric
nipples and what these are for are isolation, so you don't get electrolysis
forming between two dissimilar metals. Very big deal a lot of the older water
heaters where they literally just screwed a copper male adapter into the
water heater you can go back now and look and see where those dissimilar
metals are eroding away and that's going to cause problems for people. Now when
the cold water comes in, of course it goes through your ball valve or your gate
valve, it goes through your dielectric nipple and then it comes into the water
heater, now from there it goes into your cold water dip tube. Your cold water dip
tube brings that water all the way down to the bottom of your water heater and
the reason being is, especially in a gas water heater, that is where the heating
elements are or that is where your heat source is. At the bottom of your water
heater, right above your burner assembly, it heats up the
bottom of that tank just like a pot on a stove and that's where you get your hot
water. Now, before we get into the burner
assembly, let's go back to the parts of the water heater. Up on top you'll see a
hex nut going into your tank. That's your anode rod. Now the anode
rod is made out of magnesium, aluminum or an aluminum-zinc compound and what that
is: the anode rod is a sacrificial rod, so that as your water heater ages and
normally I tell people: in the first year at the end of the first year, change out
your anode rod. You can actually almost double the life of your water heater. If
you've got a good filtration system, a good anti-scaler and you change out your
anode rod you will be surprised how many years you can actually get out of your
water heater. But that anode rod goes down and say that there is a little,
tiny, pinhole in the glass, well instead of the water starting to
eat and rust away that tank, what happens is that and the rod will sacrifice
itself and that material will go and create a seal on the inside of the tank
so the water never gets to the steel. So anode rods and like they call them
they're a sacrificial rod, because that rod will give up itself to help protect
the inside of your water heater. Now on the outside of your gas water heater, the
different parts that you have are up top you've got the flue pipe. Now the flue
pipe comes out of the top goes up all the way out the roof and what this does
this eliminates the dangerous gases from from burning the natural gas to heat for
you to heat your water. So those gases go up through the center of your
water heater your water heater actually has a tube in the middle of it and
there's baffles and ports in there to make that water or make that heat stay
towards the outside because that creates a larger heating surface and make sure
water heater more efficient. So when those gases heat and go up and rise they
are actually still heating your water heater. Then they get up to
the top they go up the chimney, they go up through the flue pipe, they go all the
way out the roof into your atmosphere and go away. So your flue pipe, you want
to make sure is set properly on the top of your chimney on your water heater
you'll make sure everything's lined up. These keep the dangerous gases out of
your house. That flue pipe also needs to be connected really, really well. There
shouldn't be any holes, there shouldn't be just, you know, duct tape on it or
anything like that. So that is one aspect of it. Now down towards the bottom when
you come down the front of your water heater, the first thing you're going to see
on the side is your control valve. This is what controls the gas flow to your
gas water heater and this is where, if it's a newer one you're going to have an
igniter on it, if it's an old-style control valve you're going to have your
your main gas feed coming out, you're going to have your thermocouple coming out,
and your feed for your thermal coupling or for your pilot light. Your
thermal coupling is what creates an electric spark. Once you light that
pilot light, that thermocouple creates an electric energy that tells the gas valve:
hey it's good to go. It's ok to go ahead and send enough gas down here to lap the
burner assembly because we have flame down here. So that's an old-style gas
valve, or control valve. The new-style control valves actually have
an igniter on it so, you know, when you go to light that water heater and you press
that pilot light, it's got a button on it you push and you actually look through
the view port on the burner assembly. Now the burner assembly itself or the
screws on the side where it actually seals off to your tank, these are the new
FVIR tanks to where fuel vapors cannot get up in there and cause an
explosion. You know, we used to have to put water heaters up on an 18-inch stand
out in the garage, anywhere it could be around any dangerous vapors. Now the new
FVIR water heaters kind of take care of that. What you want to do though is,
when you go to light that water heater you want to look in that view port, you
want to turn it to pilot, you want to press that button and then you want to
press that igniter. Look in there, see if you see a spark, if you see a spark you
should also see a flame. If you don't, then you start having
problems with either your control valve, your burner assembly or things like that.
Guys, gas water heaters have gotten much more efficient here lately, not to say
they ever weren't. But in what two or three years ago, they changed everything
to make them more efficient and that's why water heaters got bigger. If you're
changing out your water heater at home yourself, what I recommend is make sure
that you measure how big your water heater is and make sure you measure how
big your opening is to get it there. Water heaters grew two inches three or
four years ago and what happened then is sometimes we went into places and we
said: look we can't get the same size water heater in here. May have had to
take them to a smaller water heater, may have had to change the opening to get it
in there. Guys, now we get down to maintenance. If
you look down at the bottom of your water heater you've got a drain valve. If
your water heaters just a year or two old I recommend if you hadn't done it
yet, start flushing that water heater. What you do is hook up a short water
hose to it, put it in a five-gallon bucket, open it up,
fill the bucket up, close it, look at all the junk in the bottom of it and go pour
that out. Now you're okay to go ahead and pour that down a drain or something, just
be careful. Remember that water is very hot and PVC is not made for water, you
know, boiling or anything like that or even up around 140 degrees. Now you can
pour it down it, I just recommend turning on some cold water first to the tub, pour
your bucket in there and you're okay. What's really smart would be carry it
out, pour it in your driveway, pour it down the alley, you know, just remember
you could leave some kind of a stain. So be very careful with that, make sure it's
not going to be in an area that if it does leave the stain you're going get
upset about it. But guys, water heater maintenance should be done at least once
a year. If you've got a relatively new water heater and you want to keep it
super efficient, every couple of months run that hose into a five-gallon bucket,
open it, fill it up and close it. I don't recommend closing the valve on top and
completely draining it or anything like that. Literally you can push most of the
stuff out of the bottom of your water heater just doing it the way that
I'm telling you. Guys I hope you're enjoying these videos and if you've ever
drained yours or flushed yours or anything like that let us know about it
down in the bottom, leave us some comments. If you like these videos please
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please let us know if there's anything we can talk about to help you with your
plumbing. My name's Roger Wakefield with Texas Green Plumbing, saving you money
one drop at a time.