I changed out both elements in my electrc water back in late August. Had to change the bottom one out again today.
Have you checked your sacrificial anode? If it’s gone, this will keep happening.
Anodes protect against corrosion. They don’t do anything for hard water scale.
That’s not entirely true: sacrificial anodes attract and collect calcium and magnesium as well as preventing rust.
The prevention of rust does slow scale accumulation because rust is a rough porous surface that scale likes to stick to. But other than that (anodes also are rough porous surfaces) I’m not aware of any way they actively reduce it. Maybe the electronic ones, but that’s out of my wheelhouse (and they aren’t sacrificial).
I have never heard of this before. Thanks for mentioning it.
The sacrificial anode is there to protect the steel tank. It lasts a long time. This is a hard water problem as everyone else is saying, and a water softener would solve the issue.
*Edit: check the very bottom of your tank since you have the elements out. It most likely has a pile of calcium and other minerals sitting on the bottom.
-a plumber
Steel tank, not copper?
Steel tanks, that’s why the sacrificial anode is there so the water eats it away instead of the tank.
In NA, steel is standard. I’ve never seen a copper hotwater tank in Canada. I think that used to be somewhat common in Europe, but copper is freakin’ expensive now so that’s gone by the wayside, as well.
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Anodes for the anode gods!
Rust for the Rust King!
Was hoping someone remembered what that thing was called
that is a high fantasy wizard ass sounding name for a plumbing part
“Sire, the Sacrificial Anode…has failed.”
“SOUND THE ALARMS!”
This is a hard water problem
How do I change it to easy water?
Hire Phil Collins
No, a hard problem about water
An NP-hard water problem?
Skill issue then
I’ll take some hard water
Absolut-ly
Yeah you will
Do fill your hot water heater with pesto / green chili salsa whatever we got there
You really need to invest in a system that softens your water.
Or just a good filter system.
You can’t filter out ions of calcium like that. A huge reverse osmosis system for the entire home would be prohibitively expensive. I used to live in an area with very hard water and everyone had water softeners. You only need to buy the salt every few months and it’s not too bad. RO filters were only connected to a tap on the side of the sink in the kitchen - those membranes aren’t cheap.
RO also puts about four times as much water down the drain as it filters. A whole house RO filter is extremely wasteful. You don’t need to be filtering every toilet flush.
Yeah, I think most people, myself included at one time, are more fascinated by RO than we understand the practical considerations.
Use RO locally at a single tap in the house, if the water quality warrants it. Perhaps add a desalination unit before the water heater, or centrally if you have some very hard water. But a central RO? Sounds expensive.
I’ve considered a central RO for prepping purposes, but even then a gravel/sand/active charcoal filter, followed by a UV-C mercury lamp, would probably be more cost effective, and easier to maintain without access to replacement membranes.
Isn’t that exactly what a water heater does?
You are technically right that the water heater softens the water a bit by precipitating the minerals around the heating element and thereby removing them from the water. But that is energy inefficient and expensive, since you normally don’t use a water heater to soften your water but rather to get warm water. So putting another system in front of the heater that softens it first is better than replacing the heat element every so often.
A water heater heats your water.
TIL
away with your fancy mumbo jumbo and wizard speak this here board is for regular talk
no a water heater heats the water.
a watersoftener removes dissolved minerals from water
This one definitely did both.
Right but a water heater isn’t designed to remove minerals from water. Just to heat it.
Chicken fried water heater?
I’m guessing the inside of your tank looks just like this and swapping new heating elements in isn’t going to fix that. Maybe try flushing it out first?
With vinegar or some other descaler
I’m not sure of vinegar is quite powerful enough. Somehow this seems like bigger problem
Vinegar is perfectly fine for that. With a bigger amount of minerals you just need more vinegar and time.
Jesus, how bad does your sacrificial anode look?
going from that, probably ate smooth up
Yikes! Hard water?
Hard water makes the anode rod dissolve faster
Have you inspected the anode rod?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hot+water+heater+aluminum+anode+rod&t=canonical&iax=images&ia=images
Also check out sites of sediment build up
That’s why you should have a gas water heater if you have hard water. Electric units get wrecked by scale, regardless of a water softener.
But it’s a greenhouse gases contributor - electric is better. Check that anode commented below.
Anodes protect against corrosion. They don’t do anything for hard water scale.
Looks like some types can help with hard water too
https://plumbingnav.com/water-heaters/anode-rod-by-water-type/
The active electronic ones may. I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about those.
Heat pump would be best
Probably still would get issues with hard water though. OP needs a softener.
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OP could have a well.
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You would think that…
Lol I know people with a well and they never even knew they had a well they never had to touch it and never thought about it was the funniest shit when their pump went out and were confused why they didn’t have water
Electric ain’t better if you have to replace it constantly. Think of the emissions to produce these parts.
The emissions to produce a single heating element off a factory line are probably a lot smaller than keeping a jug of water in your house hot by burning natural gas off and on all day every day forever
And that’s why you get an on demand unit. In either case, heating water in a jug over and over just so it might be hot hen you need it is not a great idea.
I agree. I use very little gas to heat my water for my hydronic system and the tap. I replaced an old oil hydronic heater and traditional electric water heater with a natural gas combi boiler that does both home heat and hot water. My utility bills went through the floor, and over the whole year I put a fraction of the CO2 into the atmosphere than I did in just a winter of the old oil furnace.
Cool, when those heating elements are shipped over here via bunker fuel. I’ll bet a boatload of those coming over is more emissions than running a NG burner for a decade
Except it’s not a boat transporting one heating element, but thousands upon thousands of other things. To accurately quantify emissions you’ll need to divide the ship’s total emissions by the # of products on board, likely making transport emissions from a single heating element negligible and easily surpassed by burning methane in your house constantly every day forever
Ah yes, thousands and of other products built to be as or more disposable than the first element that blew.
Why do the boats keep coming, filled to the brim with garbage you never actually needed?
And so we come to the eventual argument. An electric water heater is going to keep a jug of water in your house hot by running off and on all day forever. Where did that electricity come from?
In my case, a mix of fossil fuel and renewable resources that on the whole are significantly less carbon-intensive per unit of energy than straight up burning methane in my house
I bet you like nuclear.
I wish we had European style water heaters at the tap. But that’s not safe. You should see what I find in hospital infrastructure.
Oh I used to work at a hospital that was built in the 60s and know full well what sort of asbestos-laden Frankenstein’s monster they become over time
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A lot of the electricity probably came from burning natural gas at the power plant, and then some of that (~5%) gets lost in transmission. If we assume the natural gas plant is 60% efficient at turning gas into electricity, then an electric heating element in a hot water tank at your house would be about 55% efficient.
A typical gas furnace is about 80% efficient at turning gas into hot fluid, and a good one can reach 95% efficiency.
Depending on the fuel mix of your local grid, there’s a good chance that burning natural gas at home will result in less pollution than using electric resistance heaters, either for heating water or the air inside your home during winter. Places like Washington state that generate most of their electricity from hydroelectric power plants will be exceptions.
However, heat pumps can be higher than 100% efficiency. They don’t use electricity to generate heat, they just move heat from one place to another. You’ll produce fewer emissions overall by using an HVAC heat pump to heat your house, and a heat pump water tank for hot water. Even if you live in a place like Canada, you can reduce emissions by installing a dual-fuel system that will use electricity to run the heat pump weather permitting, and fall back to using gas when the outdoor temperature goes too far negative.
Using heat pumps to move heat from outside, to inside your house, to inside your hot water tank is more efficient than using gas to heat your home and water, even when the electricity to run the heat pump is generated by burning natural gas.
I don’t own a home but if I ever do I would love to put in a heat pump and solar panels. Great detailed response.
I’ll quit using gas the day shipping vessels go back to being fucking wind powered
Thanks for sharing - this is wicked. It’s strange that it has taken so long, but it’s very cool that we’re possibly seeing a return to wind power, and this looks WILD to boot.
Came with the house. Changing it out would not be fun.
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Those are two different skill sets, just because you think swapping a heating element is hard doesn’t mean everyone else does
I think you completely misunderstood their response.
Swapping a heating element is easy.
Running some pipe is also easy.
Whether the OP has gas running to the house is a whole other question
woosh
Is anyone drinking this water?
When is the last time it got tested?
You ought to do a send away test. It’s about $200 bucks on Amazon.
Check to see if your local government does this instead.
If it did, the heater wouldn’t look like this.
Depending on the state, some agencies will test drinking water samples for a small fee that is much less than $200. In Michigan, the department of health did it for me. This is likely hard water. And if it’s from a well, it should be tested every so often anyways.
I’m presuming it’s well water because city water wouldn’t do that unless there was a major, widespread problem.
$200 is for the full array of tests. VOCs, heavy metals, bacteria. Good to get the full testing done at least once.
Another casualty of the auroral storm. Darn those cosmic rays!
