Water Heater problem (1 Viewer)

[Chad Ferguson]

I just recently moved in to a house and the water heater on last 3-4 minutes for a shower hot water wise. Now, I was just recently told that there is an item you have to replace every year, like a fuse or something. Can anyone give me a hand with this?
Thanks

 

[Eric Kahn]

if you are only getting 3 to 4 minutes of hot water out of your heater, you most likly have one of the heaters with the bad supply dip tube
it is a tube in the water heater that is inside the heater under the cold water input that goes to the bottem of the tank, if it has come apart (there was a bad lot of them) you will get just what you say.
on some water heaters, it can be replaced and it only cost a couple of bucks but you have to disconnect the cold water input pipe to put it in

 

[Gerald LaFrance]

there could be a few things wrong check out this site has some things you can check:

http://www.chilipepperapp.com/troublee.htm

But I would recommend getting a pro!!:star:

 

[Frank Zimkas]

Dip tube

 

[Jimi C]

Geez, he was just asking for help.. no need for insults here.:b

 

[Kirk Gunn]

How old is the water heater ? Since they typically last 10-12 yrs, may be prudent to go ahead and replace before anything catastrophic happens, especially if you have a finished basement.

As we put the finishing touches on our new basement HT, I glanced through the new closet that encloses the furnace and water heater... felt like it was a ticking time bomb ready to spew water underneath my new floor !

 

[Mark Philp]

It's better to replace it now rather than wait until it dies on a weekend in the middle of winter. We've owned our house for 15 years. It's a two-family, thus has two hot water tanks. We replaced them a year or so after we bought the place and again around two years ago so they lasted about twelve years. I wouldn't just buy the cheapest one I could find, I'd shop around and maybe get a mid-priced one as you'll get a longer warrenty. Also if you use a lot of hot water, maybe you have kids or like really long showers, you might want to think about buying a larger one, say fifty gallons instead of thirty. It's a little more in price, but might be worth it so you don't run out of hot water. You would be surprised at how the price to install a hot water tank varies. Call a couple of plumbers and then compare it to someplace like Home Depot. If you know anything about plumbing you could do it yourself, although the building codes in many communities say you to have a professional do it. Good luck.

 

[Frank Zimkas]

With very few exceptions, the only tanks I install are Rheem Professional Water Heaters. A larger tank is a great idea, but make sure that you have the BTU's to heat the water quickly. A 50 gallon tank with a 50k BTU/H burner is a great solution for people that can't get enough hot water from a 40 gallon tank (RE: teenagers). I went one step further in my home and installed a 50 gallon/65k BTU/H tank. We never have any problems with our hot water supply. Recovery time from a cold tank is approx. 35-45 minutes.

 

[Mike OConnell]

Chad:

I am going to ask a few obvious questions:

Do you have an electric or gas water heater?

There will be a date associated with the serial number on the heater - what is the date?

If you just purchased the house and it was empty for a short time, the previous owner (or builder if the house is new) may have left the water heater on and turned the thermostat to its lowest setting to save on utility bills - turn it up. Gas water heaters have a single thermostat on the gas control. Electric water heaters may have dual thermostats - one for each element. On electric heaters many times you must remove an access panel to get to the thermostats - be careful - there can be live wires behind those panels.

Check those things and let us know what you find.

Mike

 

[John Alvarez]

The once a year thing is flushing it to make sure deposits don't build up.

 

[John Watson]

I'm in a similar but different situation, but this info is good.

Situation. Present extremely limited supply of hot tap water comes from a coil in an oil fired furnace whose principal function is heating a baseboard hot water heating system.

Thinking about when a new furnace is necessary, get domestic oil fired hot water heater included in the unit. But don't want to replace an efficent quiet 30 year old furnace at this stage, before the rec room adjacent gets redesigned for sound proofing etc.

Til then thinking about an electric heated 25 gallon tank to replace a dead 40 gallon tank, as the coil in the old furnace only produces a few gallons of hot at a time.

Is the info about a reheat time of 35-40 minutes that Frank mentioned any shorter on a smaller sized unit like 25 gallons? Due to astronomically rising electricity and oil costs, we want to get by for as little as posibble in next few years, til house insulation (via design changes) can be implemented.

Thanks for any info