A few months back A came home with a tale of woe concerning our friend and neighbor's water heater. The thing had sprung a leak, flooded their bed room and ultimately had to be replaced at a cost of over $800. A was quite concerned that we were next on the water heater disaster list. Our water heater is tucked in the back of my office closet. I cleaned everything out of the way to investigate. No sign of a problem. But I did a little digging.
I learned that all water heaters have an anode rod. This is a long metal rod about three quarters of an inch thick. As time goes by, the metal transfers off this rod to the sides of the water heater to keep them from oxidizing. It's a process similar to the way metal plating works like for baby shoes.
The owner's manual says this should be inspected every year and replaced when signs of wear appear. Of course, in over ten years, I have never done this.
I call the 800 number and they assure me that this was the thing to do. They told me that the Home Depot was their parts dealer.
No one at the Home Depot had heard of replacing anode rods. However, their employee looked into the owner's manual of a water heater they had for sale, and sure enough, it said "check the anode rod every year and replace as necessary."
I call George Morlan, the water heater people, and Judson's the local plumber and they didn't actually laugh out loud, but did say "no body does that. In all our years of being in business, no one has called us to come out and check their anode rod." So what's the deal?
Tuesday, I bought an anode rod as a precaution and then took the one out of our heater. The truth of the matter was ours had completely dissolved. So I installed the one I bought. So maybe I have lengthened the life of our water heater for a couple of years. Who knows?
I asked Judson's how much plumbers get an hour. "$92.00, portal to portal," was the answer. That means I would be paying not only for work done, but also for driving time. That might answer why no one has the plumber do this fairly simple check.
If you have a water heater, just for the fun of it, why not see what your owner's manual says about anode rods. Let me know what you find out.
No comments:
Post a Comment