Installing a new Hot Water Heater..? Any advice..

I’ve seen the braided ones fail more than once. I prefer rhino flex nowadays. Stainless are almost impossible to kink. Not the ones from Home Depot. Those suck too LOL. I get my stainless rhino flex from my plumbing supply house.

 

Yes, most water heaters come with the cheapest drain valves ever and once you open them they never want to close.

When I worked at a well known service plumbing shop they had this terrible promotion to do a free water heater flush on every residential call. I absolutely hated it because 99% of the time the drain valves leaked after and the shop expected us to sell a replacement or show them how much sediment is in there and sell a new heater. 99% of customers said it wasn't leaking before you touched it. I started carrying brass hose caps in bulk that year. I could be a scumbag on commercial jobs but I wasn't cold enough to stick residents like that.

I never swapped the hose valve for a ball valve, that's a good idea. The heaters I installed at least had brass drain valves. Bradford White preferred but Rheem was my runner up go-to.

 

TLDR: Just a pet peeve of mine.....It is a "water heater". It is not a "hot water heater". That is redundant.


Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department

 

Well you are right. It didn't even last 24 hours. The hot water line was already leaking at the pipe. I guess because if you look at it, it barely has enough thread to even put on. Put on one of the older supply lines and so far, is working fine.

 

Do those supply lines have washers inside of them? Although I like the tape it may have made it so that you couldn’t bottom out the supply line completely and seal it at the hose washer inside. Typically supply lines are straight thread and the pipe is tapered. So you should only need pipe dope and Teflon if it was pipe thread to pipe thread. But since the supply line should have a washer, Teflon tape is unneeded. Maybe just do one or two wraps.

 

And usually I only see those leak at the union behind the threaded fitting.

 

Yes it did have a washer. I had taped and pipe doped the line. I may have over tightened it and might have pinched the washer, I dunno. But it was leaking just after the piece that threads on.

Anyway, used the old one and went on nice so we'll see. Hey at least I can return this one to HD and save me some money now, haha.

 

Good job.

 

Guns Up TT!!! You got this.

 

I used the same ones and thankfully they are leak free still.