You’re a ballet dancer who recently married a gorgeous woman on your troupe. Your new father-in-law, a street-wise homicide detective, is visiting for the very first moment. You suspect he secretly harbors reservations about his”Little Miss Splendid” marrying a man who performs battements tendus and battements frappés throughout the day.
Additionally, just hours prior to your in-laws’ scheduled arrival, your hot water heater suddenly goes kaput. If your young wife solicitously alarms Daddy, gunning the last stretch of a grueling 12-hour excursion, the prospect of needing to install a new hot water heater until he could even have a shower sets off a minor explosion. “Why can’t that tights-and-slipper-wearing husband of yours do it?” You hear him demand over the speakerphone. “What’s he? Some sort of [expletive deleted] woos?”
After the mobile goes dead, your lovely wife’s teeth are chattering, her knees shaking uncontrollably. Undaunted, you coolly declare that, as a matter of fact, you may replace the hot water heater on your own. After all, who needs an unhinged homicide detective operating round the house, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, simply because he can not take a hot shower?
What’s It?
A hot water heater would be your thirty to fifty-gallon tank tactfully closeted in your kitchen, bath, or any other well-concealed space.
As time passes, water heaters wear out. Newer versions have extremely sensitive detectors to detect gasoline fumes, which can also occasionally be permanently damaged by Black Flag sprays and foggers you have utilized battling invading armies of roaches. In either circumstance, the heater needs to be replaced pronto. That is if hygiene and cleanliness status high on your priority list.
When you replace your hot water heater, then you’ve got two choices. The first would be to take matters in your manly hands and take action yourself. The next option of employing an HVAC contractor is often more prudent for folks unfamiliar with terms such as a wrench, flute (not the instrument), or thermoplastic.
Who Needs It?
Everybody. Hot water heaters heating up the water supplied by your cosmetics firm, letting you do things like luxuriate in hot, candle-lit bathtubs, wash beautiful bone china, and also keep yourself in a steady source of clean underwear. Click here to get started!
HVAC is an abbreviation for Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning. HVAC Contractors chiefly concentrate on the installation and maintenance of furnaces, boilers, and central air conditioners – however, they do warm water heaters. HVAC contractors may also provide consultation to consumers, about brands and models of equipment to purchase. This support is a wee bit odd since it is a little like trying to find a new car, beginning with your cranky automobile mechanic.
There are great reasons to employ an HVAC contractor. For instance, in the unlikely event you start your hot water tank storage cupboard, and don’t observe a shut-off valve on the gas, an HVAC contractor will have a blowtorch handy to add one. Or, say, you discover a cluttered maze of wiring, since you have got an old electrical heater. An HVAC contractor will clean it up, ensuring all of the wirings is correct, while providing the heater with proper voltage and amperage. Or, finally, you find that your hot water heater closet’s an impenetrable jungle of soldered aluminum, unions, flex connectors, and re – all of improvised by your adorable”Attorney” over the years – call an HVAC contractor.
Simply make sure the contractor owns a clean credit and legal history has been in business for over three decades and meets all the state’s licensing demands.
Benefits
If all the significant pipes in your home were done cleanly and conscientiously, disconnecting your water heater and substituting it with a new one is a cakewalk, even in the event that you don’t religiously watch”This Old House.” The only items you’ll need are a spray bottle with soapy water, an adjustable wrench, a screwdriver, and a garden hose.
First, turn off electric power to your gas or electric water heater. If you’ve got a gas water heater, turn off the gas shutoff valve at the supply line, too, before disconnecting it. If your gas water heater includes a fan unit, unplug it. If your water heater’s electric, unplug it. If there’s a cable link, turn off the power first, then disconnect the cable.
Next, shut off the water supply to the water heater. Release the pressure-relief valve. Then, with your garden hose connected to the tank, run it out the window into your dead flower bed, then draining the thirty or fifty gallons inside. After that, disconnect the tank water relations. See: Water Heaters – Enersure – Home Comfort : Enersure & Home Comfort
Enlist both teenaged skateboarders you see, practicing their kickflips on your neighbor’s driveway, to consume that useless hunk of metal off to Home Depot for recycling. While they’re picking up the new one, let them slap a few flexible pipe connections on your credit card, also, if your new water heater’s measurements aren’t the same as the old ones.
After the new tank’s been dutifully lugged home, join the new collar into the flue. One sobering and cautionary notice: proper venting is critical to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning. So place the draft deflector collar above the water heater flue baffle, then attach it to the flue pipe venting outdoors. A careful reading of the producer’s directions, as far as you might resist, will beautifully illuminate activities similar to this one.
Now, turn to the valves. Your hot water tank is filling up. Assess your own water connections for leaks. Also, assess the gas fittings with the spray bottle full of soapy to see whether there are any gas escapes. If a connection’s loose and requires trimming, you’ll see tiny little bubbles. When you are absolutely certain the links are leak-proof, light the pilot, or turn on the power source.
Risks
There are not many hot water heaters manufactured with no temperature and pressure-relief valves. Make sure your brand new heater has one. It is an extremely important security device. Without one, your water heater may burst into a great ball of flame.
Finally, be careful when first setting the water heater’s temperature estimate. Your new father-in-law’s attitude might be magically transformed by your breathtaking home-improvement abilities, but you don’t want to end up scalding him to passing the minute he steps into the bathtub.
