Since most of the household is back to work today, I figured it would be a good time to do some maintenance on the hot water heater.
A bit of a build-up: This (new) house was owned by a widow for probably 8 years after her husband (allegedly) offed himself. That’s a pretty bizarre story for another day. Anyway, as you might suspect, she was prone to get sucked in by contractors as well as not maintain things as one should. One of her early “misses” was installing a solar water heater system. She did this when we still lived across the street, so it was about 10 years ago at least. She pissed everyone in the neighborhood off, as she gave the contractor everyone’s contact information so they could come around and pitch their crap. That did not go over well. When she had the roof replaced a year ago she had the roofer remove the solar panel, yet they left the stub-ups for the water lines. WTF? So I’ve got a new roof with a couple of pipes sticking out of it about a foot, but again, that’s just another issue for the list that I keep… The water heater is really a glorified storage tank. It’s an 80 gallon American water heater with a closed loop that the solar panel’s water would circulate through. Funny, as when we moved in I heard this whirring sound in the garage. The circulating pump was still connected to the loop piping and running, despite everything being disconnected. Duh! Oh yeah - because it’s a solar storage tank, it’s only got one 4500W heating element in it, too. Great. 80 gallons of water and a 4500W heating element... I was sure the water heater had never been flushed, so I did my morning run to Home Despot/Lowe’s and got some brass parts to replace the usual crappy drain valves on most water heaters. 3/4” brass nipple, brass ball valve, hose adapter and a cap. I get home, turn power off to the heater, get the garden hose run out of the garage, open a couple of hot water faucets in the house and get ready to open the nylon/plastic drain valve. Nothing. Nada. Not a drip. Get the compressor and a spray gun with a rubber tip. Open the drain valve, hit it with 100 psi air, and BOOM! A huge blowout on my side. Water and probably a 1/2 cup of scale comes flying out of the drain and coats me. Nice, but progress. Nope. There’s so much scale in this thing it just clogs the valve right back up after I blow it clear. OK, so we’re going to play nasty, eh? Got out my spray can of Kroil and hosed down the joint between a nipple coming out of the tank and the nylon/plastic drain valve. I’m enjoying some lunch while the Kroil does it’s thing. I’ll go out shortly and see if I can turn the valve loose. Earlier attempts yielded no movement. This could get ugly. -D _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
