MaXX Posted March 18, 2004 Share Posted March 18, 2004 Alright fella's, I had the unfortunate opportunity to change out my water heater last night. The ten year old A.O. Smith sprung a leak, getting the floor in my utility room pretty wet. So, here is what you need to know. 1) How long are you going to be in your house? Water Heaters come with a wide range of warranty's. I picked the best brand I recognized (GE) with the shortest warranty thus lowest price (6 year warranty, $228.00). 2) Are you going to do the work yourself? Home Depot was going to charge me a flat $299 to replace and dispose of my existing water heater, on top of course of the cost of the Water Heater. When I looked at the job, I realized I could do it relatively easily, even though I did not have the correct tools. $30 later that was solved. So here goes. Be sure you have a pipe wrench. I don't care if you have vise grips, Johnny Locks or some-other kind of pliers, a pipe wrench is a must for plumbing, period. I replaced my existing water heater with one as close as possible to the original. 40 gallon gas water heater. My house is only 10 years old so everything is pretty straight forward. You need to shut off the gas to the water heater and disconnect the fittings. You will probably need ALL of the fittings for the new water heater so don't throw them out. Turn off the water, ALL THE WATER in the house. My water heater has a valve right above the cold water in connection but the fucker leaked. My main water shut off was no better (cheap $3 valves). If you have any water in the pipes, you will not be able to sweat solder the fittings, I don't care what you try to do. They must be dry. Anyway, after trying to solder through the wet and ruining $12 in fittings and pipe, I tried I new approach. Went back to home depot, bought all the fittings again and also a top of the line valve ($6.00 valve, not $2.89, you do get what you pay for). I proceeded to solder as much as I could together before screwing the fittings into the top of the water heater and sweating the connections to the copper pipes. Anyway, I could not get the water to stop dripping out of the existing valve so finally I cut the thing off and jammed a piece of "white" bread up in the pipe (as per the recommendation of one of my friends who is a master plumber, also rides a Mille and I do a lot of work for him). Anyway, the bread will stop any dripping long enough to be able to solder the fitting and will just dissolve into a paste and come out the drain eventually. Things I found out. The new water heaters come with some nipples with some plastic apparatus inside of them at the connections where the water comes in and out. These are meant to be there. The ball that floats around inside the plastic actually helps keep heat in the heater. With that, you do not have to use them. I did not because I bought Male fittings and I had to remove the nipples to connect the fittings. 2nd, shut off the water main and open all of your faucets upstairs and downstairs. This will just keep make things easier, believe me. 3rd, do as much soldering unconnect as possible. Try to only have to do one soldering connection, the last coupling to the water lines and be sure gravity is working with you. i.e. be sure the last connection you are soldering the top of the fitting to the pipe, not the underside. Other then that, it is a straight forward swap. Good luck. Tools I needed Pipe Wrench (borrowed from neighbor) Pipe cutting tool ($8) Torch, flux and solder ($20) Fittings and pipe 1st visit: ($10) Fittings and valve 2nd visit: ($12) MaXX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaXX Posted March 18, 2004 Author Share Posted March 18, 2004 Ooops, almost forgot, teflon tape for the threaded connection to the water heater. MaXX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N1K Posted March 19, 2004 Share Posted March 19, 2004 When you say 'sweating' what do you mean? Is that just soldering with a torch? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Involute Posted March 19, 2004 Share Posted March 19, 2004 Yes. "Sweating" is joining the copper pieces using the torch (MAP Gas works best IMO), silver solder and flux. It's really kind of fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 19, 2004 Share Posted March 19, 2004 Nice write-up Mack. I already copied and pasted onto the hard drive for the cursed day I have to do the same. Thanks, Sean. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaXX Posted March 19, 2004 Author Share Posted March 19, 2004 When you say 'sweating' what do you mean?Is that just soldering with a torch? No, it is the result of sodomy with a Jew!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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