Thanks, that's what I'm looking for.We still have the original Ruud 50 gallon high recovery water heater in our house, the water heater is 19 years old.
My grandma had a Ruud 40 gallon standard recovery water heater installed in 1990 and it's death was induced by a flood that devastated her neighborhood, it was still going strong. That was 18 years old.
The water heater in our 3 unit apartment building is 13 years old, still going well. 50 gallon State.
My aunt's 30 gallon A.O Smith water heater lasted 16 years before the tank rusted thru at the inlet nipple and it was just replaced less than a month ago with a G.E.
A person I know had their water heater's bottom drop out on them when it was approximately 15 years old (this was back in the 90s), they got a new one about 15 years ago and I hear that it's starting to leak.
All the water heater's I listed are on city water from lake Michigan, it's pretty common around here to have water heater's last 14-17 years and not rare to have them going over 20 years.
:EDIT: all of the above water heater's are gas models.
1 30 is a statistically large sample, assuming they are representative samples. If you have less than 30 your uncertainty increases and somewhere I have a table that gives me these numbers.I don't think you have enough data points to be statistically significant with those numbers.
1
But no matter what the number is...let's say you are at the 15 year point on a water heater, and you come up with some number that says you have 1 chance in 3 of lasting 5 more. Or whatever.
What does that mean....how do you do a cost benefit of the added years about the potential damage caused by a leaker?
2
How do you measure the hassel factor of having the WH croak at the most inopportune time?
3
There a certaily plenty of gas WH today which do not outlive the 6 year warranty. But how many of those were due to faulty install??
4
So efficiency drops to 50% by 6 years? You have a link?I don't care how long a water heater lasted,
The efficiency of that heater went down dramatically the longer it sat in use.
And since people think what they don't know won't hurt them, a water heater that came with a V-8 running on 4 cylinders with a terrible energy rating is not important to the fact that it doesn't leak or not.
Every 6 years is when water heaters should be replaced to even remotely follow those energy guide stickers.
If you think a water heater that's operating 20 years old only costs you what the sticker says on the side of it...
1 30 is a statistically large sample, assuming they are representative samples. If you have less than 30 your uncertainty increases and somewhere I have a table that gives me these numbers.
.
There are probably a hundred thousand plumbers in the US. Home depot alone sells around 10,000 water heaters a week. A sample of 30 from 6 old geezers on the forum here.....????
With help deciding on a repair/replace decision. . .Where does all this leave us?
So efficiency drops to 50% by 6 years? You have a link?
This should be easily measured by seeing how much gas or kwh it takes to raise the water temp. 1 BTU per pound of water per degree F and 1 Therm of energy from approx. 100 cubic feet of natural gas or 29 kwh of elec heat.
Because, now the replacement time would also depend on how much you spend per therm of NG or elec., in addition to how much a new heater costs.
Sounds like the strategy behind Cash For Clunkers. What's good for society may not be good for each individual in that society.
They're just numbers. Why are you so upset?
assuming one therm of NG costs the same as one therm of elec.
Not very compelling, unfortunately.Do I have a link? NO, I am THE LINK.
I've used some pretty old gas water heaters and their gas use wasn't that much different than what I've seen in new units.That's the efficiency as stated on the yellow tag, years from now you can erase those numbers because it grows progressively larger.
This is awkward, but...
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