3 Water Heater Fixes Every Homeowner Should Know

I'm back over at my neighbor's house. His water heater was installed 15 years ago. It's not leaking. You know, we just had that temperature and pressure relief valve issue. So, so we're going to be changing out this drain valve and we're going to be cleaning this out. I bought this kit on Amazon. This is like the number one cleaning thing on Amazon. This uh turbo tank cleaner. And it says if it's not leaking, don't replace it. That's my motto, too. So, come along. Let's get to fixing. >> [music] >> We shut the gas off, shut the water off, brought over a little mesh colander as well just to see how much sediment we end up pulling out of here with our drain cleaning device. Oh, gosh. Okay. So, we got a good little leaky. It definitely was leaking. All right. Yeah. All right. Let's go get that popped off now. Grab a flathead screwdriver. And this is just righty tighty, lefty loosey. It's actually draining good. It just doesn't close. And really, I like a full port ball valve anyway. Before I get this water heater drained out completely, I am also going to change the anode rod. This is a flexible anode rod kit I got off of Amazon. This is a small American business. They say this actually will fix the rotten egg odor fix. So, if your hot water stinks, well, try changing out to an aluminum zinc flexible anode. But, what your anode rod does, the anode rod will keep your tank from getting a Your tank essentially will eat itself from the inside out because of the water. Well, the anode rod is designed to stop that. Okay. And so, before we get too much water out of this tank, I am going to stop. I like to have some weight to the water heater when changing this out, right? Cuz I don't want it to move on me. Once we pull this out, we're going to see what a 15-year-old anode rod looks like. But my thought is, hey, if I'm doing all this other stuff for you, we're putting this new in, we're cleaning your tank, we're putting a new drain valve, well, let's just put in a new anode rod as well and get this thing completely hooked up. All right, this is a flexible anode rod, looks like a four-piece nunchuck set. Comes with some Teflon tape, which is awesome. Oh, comes with boiler drain cap, which is great. I mean, these are always nice to have, whether you need it for your hose bib or for your drain port, you know, whatever. Some Teflon tape and comes with the socket to fit this. All you need is a breaker bar or a socket wrench. This tip right here is great. This tip is if your hot water smells like rotten eggs. It does not. We're really just using this anode rod for the protection purposes of our tank. Okay? So, we don't have to worry about that. We can skip that step. Do yourself a favor, read your instructions. They're good. These guys they've obviously taken a lot of time to build this kit. Let's get that right there like so. We got this here. I like to brace there. No. All right, we're going to need a little bit more of a cheater. This is from my hole hog. So, it's the only like cheater bar that I found and it actually fits on there. So, that's great. So, let's see what we got here. See if this will give us the leverage that we need. Yeah. A little bit more leverage, guys. Sometimes All right. That's all that you need. I'm interested to see what this anode rod looks like. Great. Just pull this. And then this will come, and you can see that anode rod. The anode has been gone for a really long time. Okay, so here's what we're looking at. Right? This just comes rubber banded up, flexible. It's going to be easy to get in because you can see, like, there really is not the space to put this in the way that you would need to. If this was too long for your tank, well, then you actually could just take a hacksaw or something and chop the end of this off a little bit, but this is plenty long for what we're looking for. With this thinner white stuff, I usually go five to seven wraps here. All right, it's not that it doesn't work and I don't like using it, but I like the thicker stuff a little bit better these days. Let's get all this worked in there. Mega lock I like to use mega lock as my pipe dope. It's good for plastic and metal. And then we could just work this in here. Okay? Feeding this in. Don't want that to cross thread. Just tighten it down. Get it as tight as it'll go hand tight. Get the socket back on there. And we'll start tightening her up. Okay. All right, it's good. All right, before we pop this cover on there, we're going to make sure where to fill this up. We're going to make sure it's not leaking. Make sure everything's good to go. And now that we've got that anode rod out, we can go ahead and continue let this drain. Once your water heater's drained, we're going to be able to go ahead and we're going to switch this out now. They always kind of feel like these are a little bit hard to get off. And this little ring right here, we're just going to split that. Okay. That way we can get a better grip on this. We'll try with our bigger, you know, 12-in Knipex Cobras. See if I mean I don't know if we'll be able to grip this good. Let's just see if we can get it off with this real quick as well. Oh, yeah. Actually worked out. We didn't have to go super crazy on this, which is great. All right, so check out these little collapsible buckets. I found this little collapsible bucket the other day. So, I found this little collapsible bucket the other day. I mean, it's made for gellets something like that's what they were advertising as, but like I love this thing. Buck fifty. Best deal ever, right? For a collapsible bucket. I mean, to have a three different size bucket scenario going on right here is awesome. But now what we're going to do is we're going to put this turbo cleaner tank adapter on. Once we pull this out and it should be good. This is uh Oh man, comes with little instructions, little operating manual. Pretty sure you know how this rolls. Always oil or lube the shaft before each use. All right, so you're going to have to get in there and you know after this time cuz I'm sure it come it better come oiled. After this time we will oil this. Lube it up. Get that hooked up. This is cool, man. This is a strong little whip. This is going to be interesting. And I hopefully it doesn't wrap around the hopefully it doesn't wrap around the flexible anode. That will be interesting, too. I want to put a little Teflon around this. Okay. Just get that in there. There was a lot of build-up in there. Get the hose on here. So you can see water running through there. Coming out through the drain right here. Get that clicked on. That just starts pumping there. Kind of THUMPING AROUND. CAN SEE THAT WE'RE GETTING sediment there. That's pretty good. It seems like everything's broken up there. This is actually flowing really well. Let's let this drain completely out. This full port ball valve right here. You can see You can see that hole going through there, right? This is going to be way better ball valve style. You go five to seven wraps this point with this thinner stuff. Let's get this rolling. Pull this whole thing out. And then we will pop this full port drain on here. The shank sticks out just a little bit more, which I like. We got some flat spots right here we can tighten this down with smooth jawed pliers wrench. Uh there we go. We've got a great little setup right here for hooking this up. For connecting to a drain, for for emptying it out once a year. I think we've got a lot of that bigger scale broke up now. Let's fill it. And let's drain it. We've got full port rolling here. So just take your time, fill it up. I got I got it cracked just a little bit. You know, once in a while I'll pop the TMP, let some air out. Just got a little bit of dripping coming out of the T&P. So, now we can go over here to the sink. Oh, yeah. There we go. That noise to the water heater has stopped. So, we can crank this valve all the whole way. Let me crank this on down in there. >> [snorts] >> Oh, yeah. Full port. Great. Well, that worked out really well. Got a rubber band for this thing until next time. I only got one worry with this thing is did it destroy something in the tank? I don't think that it did, but the the skeptic side of me is like, "Hey, man, if we're beating around in there, like that's probably not the best scenario." Proper cap that comes on with it. It's always great. It's good to have a secondary, a backup, just in case somebody were to hit this. Well, at least it's not going to explode and go everywhere cuz it's got this backup on it. You're in pilot mode now. Now, you want to hold this down while clicking the igniter. There we go. Okay. So, you can see that that is the pilot light. You want to hold this valve down until the thermal couple is hot enough. Now, it [snorts] it is hot enough, so I can release that. And as soon as I turn this to on, we've got fire in there. And so now, we're going to check for some leaks, right? We get right up around here. Right up around there, and check that. That doesn't look Everything looks good right there. Unless you get down to look at that split in the bottom, you never even knew that was off there now. All right, we'll get back over here. Take a look around right down there. Make sure nothing is leaking down this knot where the anode rod goes in. Take this piece right here. Push that back down in there. All right, we're going to get everything cleaned up. We'll let this heat up the rest of the way. We've got a new anode rod in back here. We've got a new shutoff valve. The [snorts] tank has been flushed. We have a new full port drain valve. The tank has been flushed. I tested it, everything looks good. Last thing we're going to do is we are going to pipe the TMP right here. We're going to pipe it over to the drain. Only thing I like using CPVC for is running these drains. Right? A very good inexpensive way to run your TMP drain is just so much more cost-effective these days than copper. Grab our pliers wrench here, give this a couple spins counterclockwise, and it's going to come right out. Got a 3/4 in CPVC adapter right here. Just going to hit it with some Teflon. Said with the white stuff, we'll go five to seven wraps. >> You don't have to, but if you chamfer this it just it goes in the fittings better. It's nice. I got some FlowGuard Gold yellow CPVC cement. It's all-in-one. Oh, super shallow. See it right there. It's going to keep this whole thing nice and braced up. Going right there to the drain. Perfect. There we go. We changed the anode rod, got that all hooked up in place, got a new full port drain valve installed. We got this water heater cleaned out with that new cleanout tool that I got off of Amazon. I got this T&P line back behind me hooked up and now if it ever does discharge again, well, guess what? It's right there at the drain. That's going to work out and be so much better for these guys. I really hope the videos are helping. If you folks could please subscribe, click the like button, we'd love to have you keep coming back. Thank you very much and we'll see you again real soon.