No mud when water heater drained

Posted by on October 21, 2009, 8:31 am

On Oct 21, 1:32=A0am, awoodbutc...@webtv.net (Jerry - OHIO) wrote:

> Pick it up and shake it for ten min. and drain again.
> Jerry
> http://community.webtv.net/awoodbutcher/MyWoodWorkingPage
> http://community.webtv.net/awoodbutcher/1974RuppCentair

Using the word "mud" makes me wonder if you missed actual sediment.
The only sediment I've seen come out of my water heaters are very
small particles, about the size of lead pencil points that are
slightly white in color. If you were looking for something more
like muddy water, you could miss it.

Posted by Jules on October 21, 2009, 8:59 am

On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:21:32 -0700, hr(bob) hofmann@att.net wrote:

> I drained my 3 year-old gas water heater last night, for the first
> time. I drained it into a sump pump pit that is in the basement at a
> lower level than the water heater, through a piece of garden hose that
> I screwed onto the drain output. There was no sign of anything other
> than clear water throughout the entire 40 gallon draining process.

What's the drain valve like on yours? On mine it's a plastic thing where
the water path goes through a narrow channel with a couple of quite tight
bends. Whoever designed it was an idiot. When I was having issues with the
tank a few weeks back I was getting clear water out of the drain (and at a
quite good flow rate) - but the tank really was very badly sludged up, and
the valve body's just of such a poor design that it released water OK but
not any of the sediment.

I ended up draining the tank and taking the valve apart, which gave a
little less awkward path for the outflow. Then I'd turn the water on to
fill about 4 or 5 gallons of the tank (not enough to overflow the bucket
I was draining to - if you've got a sump you can add more and get a
better head of water) and feed a bit of wire in through the top of the
open valve body to dislodge sediment as it drained.

Even better would have been to remove the whole drain valve body (leaving
a 3/4" hole straight into the bottom of the tank), but it didn't want to
unscrew and I was worried about cracking it if I put any more force on it.

> I turned the input water back on and put a
> couple of gallons of fresh water into the heater to see if I could stir
> up anything on the bottom.

If you want, you can probably unscrew the bottom element and just
visually inspect it inside. My lower element was jammed solid (I had
about 4' of breaker bar on it with no luck) so I couldn't take that
route. Throw a bit of plumbing paste on the threads when you put the
element back in and it'll all seal up nicely again.

cheers

Jules

Posted by hr(bob) hofmann@att.net on October 21, 2009, 12:33 pm

wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:21:32 -0700, hr(bob) hofm...@att.net wrote:

> > I drained my 3 year-old gas water heater last night, for the first
> > time. =A0I drained it into a sump pump pit that is in the basement at a
> > lower level than the water heater, through a piece of garden hose that
> > I screwed onto the drain output. =A0There was no sign of anything other
> > than clear water throughout the entire 40 gallon draining process.

> What's the drain valve like on yours? On mine it's a plastic thing where
> the water path goes through a narrow channel with a couple of quite tight
> bends. Whoever designed it was an idiot. When I was having issues with th=

> tank a few weeks back I was getting clear water out of the drain (and at =

> quite good flow rate) - but the tank really was very badly sludged up, an=

> the valve body's just of such a poor design that it released water OK but
> not any of the sediment.
> I ended up draining the tank and taking the valve apart, which gave a
> little less awkward path for the outflow. Then I'd turn the water on to
> fill about 4 or 5 gallons of the tank (not enough to overflow the bucket
> I was draining to - if you've got a sump you can add more and get a
> better head of water) and feed a bit of wire in through the top of the
> open valve body to dislodge sediment as it drained.
> Even better would have been to remove the whole drain valve body (leaving
> a 3/4" hole straight into the bottom of the tank), but it didn't want to
> unscrew and I was worried about cracking it if I put any more force on it=

> > I turned the input water back on and put a
> > couple of gallons of fresh water into the heater to see if I could stir
> > up anything on the bottom.

> If you want, you can probably unscrew the bottom element and just
> visually inspect it inside. My lower element was jammed solid (I had
> about 4' of breaker bar on it with no luck) so I couldn't take that
> route. Throw a bit of plumbing paste on the threads when you put the
> element back in and it'll all seal up nicely again.
> cheers
> Jules

It's a gas heater and very hard to get to since it is behind the water
softener. I think I'll just wait 2 or 3 years and try again. I
didn't see any small particles or anything, just clear water coming
out the end of the hose I was using to drain it so maybe our water is
pretty good. It comes from Lake Michigan via Chicago water system and
then our DuPage County water folks so it has a lot of places to drop
sediment as well as pick up god knows what along the way.

Posted by Jules on October 21, 2009, 12:41 pm

On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:33:25 -0700, hr(bob) hofmann@att.net wrote:

> It's a gas heater

yes, duh, sorry about that. That'll teach me not to post when I haven't
had enough coffee ;)

> I think I'll just wait 2 or 3 years and try again. I didn't
> see any small particles or anything, just clear water coming out the end
> of the hose I was using to drain it so maybe our water is pretty good.

Fairy nuff. If there's no apparent problem then it makes sense, I suppose.
If it's partially silted it'll lose efficiency, but there's probably no
easy way to monitor that over time with a gas heater.

(I must have pulled about ten gallons of crud out of ours, which obviously
hadn't happened all at once - yet in terms of water temperature it had all
seemed to be working fine until recently, and previous checks of the water
from the drain valve had shown no signs of build-up because the poor valve
design wasn't letting it through. It had probably been using way more
power than it should for several years...)

cheers

Jules

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No mud when water heater drained - Page 3