tankless water heater, anyone ?

[Nords]

I recently replaced my water heater (freebie lifetime item from Lowes!) and Holy crap! the damn thing musta weighed 200 lbs. It was filled with sand and beach crud! Amazing, and it was on the second floor
Moral of the story.... if you're by-the-sea, get the lifetime warrantee unit

Another moral would be the quarterly bucket-flush out the drain connection at the bottom until it the grit stops coming out.

When we have a water conditioner upstream, though, we never get any grit.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Lots of people do the bucket thing but dont get much of the grit out because they dont follow the directions.

For most water heaters, turn off the burner; shut off the water; attach a hose (bucket aint gonna cut it) and drain as much water as will come out of the unit; turn the water back on until you have a pretty good flow from the hose, wait a few minutes, then shut the water off. Rinse and repeat the water on/off until you get no more crud.

Draining the heater and then turning the water on and off makes a swirling action at the bottom of the WH that helps expel the crap through the drain. Otherwise it mostly sits in the bottom and while you might drain off some excess, you arent getting a whole lot.

 

[JohnEyles]

You make a pulse and it has to be dissipated somehow. In normal operation, this is dissipated by shaking the crap out of your pipes. Over time well fastened pipes will loosen, making the problem worse.

Wow, you know a lot about plumbing for a cute/fuzzy bunny.

I wonder if plastic/Qest pipes are less problematic due to their inherent
flexibility absorbing the pressure pulse ?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

That new plastic stuff is pretty interesting, and yes it'll take more stress than copper pipe but its still susceptible to water hammer...just less so.

But flexible, largely self insulating, easy to install. Which means it'll probably cause cancer or become self-aware and kill you in your sleep.