Is your water heater making noise? In this video I'm gonna tell you the things
to look for and the things to listen for to let you know if you've got problems or
if you just need to do maintenance on your water heater. I'm Roger Wakefield, LEED
AP, The Expert Plumber. I've been plumbing over 38 years and I
have every master endorsement in the state of Texas. In this channel, I'm
teaching you how to fix your plumbing fast and free. If you haven't been here
before, please subscribe so you don't miss anything. Water heaters make a wide
variety of noises and knowing what those noises mean can let you know whether
it's time to do maintenance on the water heater or possibly if there's some parts
on a water heater you may want to look at replacing yourself or calling a
plumber to replace. So we're going to talk about some of those today just to
let you know. As you see, we've got a cut open gas water heater. Thanks to the
people at Bradford White for doing this for us, I'm able to show you the inside
of the water heater to kind of let you know some things that you might not know
about a water heater. The first one that I'm going to talk
about are the cracking, popping, and rumbling. Now these are normally with an electric
water heater. On the inside of the electric water heater you've got the
heating elements and what happens is the sediment, the calcium, and magnesium start
to build up on the heating elements and when when they shut off, water gets
trapped down under that calcium and magnesium. When the element kicks back on
it heats that up and creates that boiling, that cracking or that popping
noises and what it is it's heating that water and forcing it up through the
sediment that's under the elements. So what you may want to do at that point is
look at possibly changing your heating elements. The other noise you get with an
electric or a gas water heater it can be a rumbling noise and that can be caused by
the calcium and magnesium all the sediment being built up in the bottom
and then that water flushing it around and creating a lot of noise while this
is going on. So there's a couple of things you may want to think about here.
You may want to put an anti-scale system on your house that's going to help
eliminate that. What it does is it breaks it down, it keeps it in the water. You
know there's nothing wrong with calcium and magnesium in our water. It's actually
there for our own good but, it's bad for our products. So an anti-scale system
will break it down and keep it in the water where it
should be instead of it sticking to your heating elements, your water heater or
the inside of your fixtures so that's a good thing. So what you may want to do is
do that and then flush your water heater but we'll talk about flushing your water
here more whenever we talk about maintenance. All right knocking and
hammering. Two more noises. Now this can be caused by a shock arrestor not being
installed or a water hammer arrestor. What happens is some fixtures, a toilet
can do it, normally a dishwasher, something that has a solenoid valve
where water is instantly on and instantly off. It can cause that water to
hammer and pop inside your walls. If it's really bad enough, we have opened up
walls and installed shock arrestors or water hammer arrestors. We've actually
installed pieces of tube that have air in it to where it'll absorb some of that.
If your problems bad enough, it can be fixed, but normally you're gonna have to
get into your wall to take care of that problem when it comes to the hammering
the pounding noise something like that and that really doesn't matter whether
you've got a gas or electric water heater. That can even occur on your cold
water side. Sometimes you hear that noise of water screeching like a screaming top
of a sound. What those noises are, even though we're talking about water heaters
that can happen on a toilet if a valve does not completely close and your fill
valve is a valve and if it doesn't close all the way water can screech through it.
Hot water for some reason tends to make a little bit more noise. So if you've got
a valve that didn't get closed all the way it can make a screaming noise. If
somebody has done some work on your water heater and maybe they didn't open
your valve all the way it can make a screaming noise there. What I tell people
when they get that screaming noise is look at that valve on your water heater
and then look at your toilets. Look at anything that may be not closed all the
way but that screeching noise a lot of times is just a valve that didn't get
closed all the way. Alright, now let's talk about the ticking and tapping
noises. Sometimes if you hear it right at your water heater, sometimes the nipples
on top, these threaded pieces of pipe that come out, can have a check valve or
a heat trap in there and sometimes it'll have a piece in there that moves and
you'll hear that tapping. Now that is something that if it really
does annoy you, you can take these out and put in a normal dielectric nipple or
put in a regular nipple and put in a dielectric union. I like the dielectric
unions that makes it so that if you need to disconnect your water heater there's
a union there so literally it's a threaded connection so after you turn
your water off it makes it real easy to disconnect in case you need to get in
there and do something. Now the tapping noise can also be
something you hear in your walls. When water lines heat up over about a hundred
and twenty five hundred and thirty degrees they start making that tapping
noise and it's the expansion and contraction of the metals or the pipe
that the water runs out. Now tankless water heaters are a little bit different.
They make a lot of noises. First of all, if you hear the clicking noise that is
normally a switch letting it know that there is a demand or a call for hot
water. So you may hear the the switches click, you may hear relays letting it
know to turn on a fan motor, you may hear the fan motor itself. tTen when that
burner kicks on, on the tankless water heater you can normally hear it. These
are all common noises. Now some of the noises that we've already talked about,
you may hear throughout the house because the hot water noise is gonna
happen on the pipes no matter what kind of heater you've got. Also another noise
you can get is is too much calcium buildup in the heat exchanger. Again we
go back to an anti-scale system if you've got a tankless water heater it's
probably more important for you to have this than it is a tank. A heat exchanger
in a tankless water heater is not very wide and if you start building up a
quarter-inch of sediment on each side of that it really does restrict the flow
and restrict how much water you're able to get out of it. So again an anti-scale
system, if you've got a tankless water heater is probably a big deal and the
noises that you hear on a tankless water heater chances are if you're right
there at the water heater it's something it's supposed to be doing. The the relays,
the switches, the fans, the blower motor itself, it's all part of that.
So tankless water heaters do make noise, just not the same types that a
tank-top does. Okay so back to the gas water heater that we're
at. Sediment will fill up in the bottom and what you get is the burner assembly
is down in the very bottom and then the bottom of the tank and all that sediment
will start to fill up. Guys the way to take care of your water heater, the most
important thing you can do, is when you have a new water heater, remember to
flush it at least once a year. Click up a water line if the drain valve at the
bottom. Either run it outside to concrete, you want it in your driveway,
the alley, the street, something like that and open this valve all the way while
the water heater still has the valve on because all you're trying to do is put
water in and flush that settlement out the bottom. If you have not flushed your
water heater in two or three or four years, anything longer than that don't do
it. After a couple of years, you're probably still okay. But once it starts
going over that, what happens is you get these little tiny hairline cracks in a
water heater and the cap, the aluminum and magnesium, off of the anode rod
actually go out and fill those cracks. So if you wait much longer than that, the
problem that you're gonna have is, you're liable to clean some of that out and
that could make that crack open up and cause you to have a leak on your water
heater. So normal maintenance, normal flushing, is something you want to make
sure you do with your water heater all the time. So is your water heater making
noises? Guys we've talked about a lot of different noises and a lot of different
solutions for it. There may be an element you need to change out. There may be a
flush that you need to perform if you hadn't done it in a little while. So I
hope you've enjoyed this video and I hope you've enjoyed some of our other
videos. If you like this leave us a thumbs up and leave us a comment down
below and let us know what you think. Have you taken care of your water heater
like you're supposed to?