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Draining Water Heater

Danny Lipford: How to drain a water heater.

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" One little maintenance chore that's real easy to overlook is the little bit of maintenance that's required to make your water heater last a lot longer and heat all that hot water that we use a lot more efficiently. All you have to do is drain the water heater every year or so. And we featured this idea on our show a couple of years ago. We were amazed of how many e-mails and letters we received and kinda made us realize that a lot of homeowners are not aware of the little bit of work that it takes to drain your water heater. Here's what happens, all those gallons of water that runs through your tank, they do have minerals and a little bit of sediment here and there, and that will settle down in the bottom of the tank. And it just makes it work a lot harder, which is the reason it costs you a lot more money to have all of that hot water. But all you have to do in order to drain your water heater is, if it's electric like this one, turn the power off that comes in to the water heater. If it's gas, turn your gas off. Then, you want to turn the valve here on top that you're supply line going into it completely off. Then, like I've done here earlier and hook up a water hose right to the bottom valve. Now, you may have one that looks like this or maybe one that looks like an outside faucet that you hook this up. Then, you turn this on to start the draining process. Then, you have a pressure release valve right here on top that you wanna open up; that prevents any vacuum from preventing the water from running out. Then, it will take a little while. This is a 30-gallon water heater. It will take a little while for all of it to drain out. And once it's completely drained out and the water stops coming out the other end, then, turn this back on, and it will hurriedly flush out the last little bit of sediment you may have in the bottom. This is really easy. It doesn't take very long, but it'll make your water heater last a lot longer."

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