How to Change a Water Heater

Changing a water heater can often seem like a difficult task. If you’re doing it for the first time. Please read this article thoroughly. Make sure that you have the power to the water heater turned off from the main circuit breaker in your home or building. I highly suggest shutting off your water service from the water meter out by the street. In most cases you will be able to turn the curb stop off with just a pair of pliers, an adjustable wrench, or the appropriate tool, the meter-key.

The reason I advocate getting your water meter is because most of the time, the water shutoff valve at the water heater itself, if it is old it will break. Now that you have your water off to the whole house, open the outside hose bibs, and faucets inside. This will drain down the water from your pipes. At this point, you want to find a water hose that will reach from the bottom hose bib on your water heater to a spot somewhere outside of your home, to which the water heater can drain. Now open up that hose bib at the bottom of the heater.

The water should drain away from the heater into your yard. Be sure the electricity is turned off to your water heater with a meter. Start by taking the access panel to the electricity on the water heater off with a screwdriver. Exposed the wire nuts and remove to wire nuts. Now remove the electrical connector from the water heater by unthreadening it.

Now that you have the electrical free from the water heater, you’ll focus on disconnecting the pipes from the water heater. Now this may mean you may have to use pliers, copper cutters, or PVC cutters. At this point, you need to figure out a way to reconnect your new heater back in place. Shark bites can be used to convert copper to plastic pipes. Do not use PVC pipe to reconnect your water heater.

Now that the water is drained from your water heater. You may use handtruck or Dolly to hoist the water heater outside of your home. You must recycle the water heater, you just can’t throw it away. Now you are able to bring the new water heater into your column, set it in place to reconnect your water pipes. Let your glue set up or solder joints set up, and reconnect your electrical. Now that everything is set.

You’ll want to slowly turn your water back on from the water meter out at the street. Make sure somebody is monitoring the water heater to ensure that in case it is elite that you’re able to stop it before it gets worse.

Open up your tub faucets on the hot side only to release any air from the water lines as the hot water here fills with water. When the stream from the tub faucet no longer sputters and is a common system stream of cold water from the top offset and is a consistent stream of cold water, you can turn off the faucet. Now turn on the electricity.

It generally takes one minute for every 1 gallon to heat up. So if you have a 40 gallon water heater. It generally takes 40 minutes to get hot water.