I know that I’m guilty of not doing this regularly, my dad, a former pipeftter and practically a living parody of the responsible homeowner dad who drove us all crazy with preventative maintenance routines doesn’t even do it regularly.
But it’s really not hard, I’m not going to write a guide here because if you just punch “how to flush a water heater” into your search engine of choice you’ll get plenty of good results.
It’ll improve the lifespan and efficiency of your water heater and decrease how much sediment and such you have in your hot water.
Also when you get a new water heater, replace the shitty plastic valve they all seem to ship with these days with a proper brass valve, it’s like a $10 part from home Depot and takes about a minute to swap them out. They probably use them because they know no one actually flushes their water heater anyway, but if you’re one of the few of us who do, you know how sketchy the plastic ones are, if you touch them more than about 2 or 3 times you feel like you’re going to break them.
How truly necessary it is will depend a lot on the quality of your water, if you have good, clean, soft water, it may not make a noticeable difference, if you have harder, dirtier water it might buy you a couple extra years with your water heater, and if your water quality is especially bad you may want to do it a couple of times a year. It takes a little bit for the tank to drain, fill back up and get to temperature, but it’s less than 10 minutes of actual hands-on work, and you can go do whatever the hell you want in the meantime as long as it doesn’t involve hot water.
You should also check and may need to replace the anode rod every few years, that can also increase the lifespan of your water heater. You’re probably going to need a beefy impact wrench though, they often really don’t like to come free.
I bought a house that was used as an office before getting remodeled and sold to to me. When I drained the hot water tank brown slime came out, it looked like a ribbon of brown mushroom. Gotta assume this was bacteria byproduct built up while the tank ran at low heat and saw little water use. I added bleach to sanitize while refilling it and drained.
Flush your water heater once a year.
I know that I’m guilty of not doing this regularly, my dad, a former pipeftter and practically a living parody of the responsible homeowner dad who drove us all crazy with preventative maintenance routines doesn’t even do it regularly.
But it’s really not hard, I’m not going to write a guide here because if you just punch “how to flush a water heater” into your search engine of choice you’ll get plenty of good results.
It’ll improve the lifespan and efficiency of your water heater and decrease how much sediment and such you have in your hot water.
Also when you get a new water heater, replace the shitty plastic valve they all seem to ship with these days with a proper brass valve, it’s like a $10 part from home Depot and takes about a minute to swap them out. They probably use them because they know no one actually flushes their water heater anyway, but if you’re one of the few of us who do, you know how sketchy the plastic ones are, if you touch them more than about 2 or 3 times you feel like you’re going to break them.
How truly necessary it is will depend a lot on the quality of your water, if you have good, clean, soft water, it may not make a noticeable difference, if you have harder, dirtier water it might buy you a couple extra years with your water heater, and if your water quality is especially bad you may want to do it a couple of times a year. It takes a little bit for the tank to drain, fill back up and get to temperature, but it’s less than 10 minutes of actual hands-on work, and you can go do whatever the hell you want in the meantime as long as it doesn’t involve hot water.
You should also check and may need to replace the anode rod every few years, that can also increase the lifespan of your water heater. You’re probably going to need a beefy impact wrench though, they often really don’t like to come free.
I bought a house that was used as an office before getting remodeled and sold to to me. When I drained the hot water tank brown slime came out, it looked like a ribbon of brown mushroom. Gotta assume this was bacteria byproduct built up while the tank ran at low heat and saw little water use. I added bleach to sanitize while refilling it and drained.