Water heater problem... please help.

Our house was built in 1999, so our water heater (gas) isn't that old.

I came home last night to find one side of the garage flooded. It was dripping from the temperature/pressure relief valve. I hooked up a hose and let out a lot of water to clear any sediment that might be blocking it. That didn't fix the problem, so I drained most of the tank to change out the valve.

At the very end of the drain cycle, there was quite a bit of what looks like globs of wax (white, rubbery, small odd shaped) that came out of the hose. I got the new valve on and filled the tank back up. I've drained the valve a few times and it comes out clear.

The FIRST problem is that we just gave our daughter a bath and the water had a greenish tint to it and there was A LOT of sediment floating around in the bath. I confirmed that it's only coming from the hot side, and not the cold. I've since drained more water (from the drain, not the relief valve), but the sediment problem remains.

The SECOND prolblem is that I don't think the new valve fixed the problem. It appears the leak slowed down quite a bit, but it seems to still be dripping. I'll check it again in the morning.

The tank has a 2 year (I believe) warranty on parts, and 6 on the tank. Could this be a tank problem?

I do also have an expansion tank on it. Does the gas heater have thermostats that may need to be replaced?

Thanks so much for the help.

Justin

It is sounding like your expansion tank has expired causing the water heater to expand and finally blow the relief valve. The debris is from the diaphram of the expansion tank. You also have a hidden problem----too high a water pressure in you water lines. The expansion tank when it is working can hide this problem but when there is no tank or the tank fails it shows it's true colors. Solution, replace the expansion tank and get a pressure reducing valve on the whole house after any connection for the lawn sprinklers.

leak

Before you or a plumber replaces the expansion tank and/or a pressure reducing valve and/or thermostat, have him, or someone, check the system to find out what the real problem is first.

flushing out the heater

what brand are we talking about here anyway??


you just have a lot of crap that has acculmiated
in the water heater....


if you really want to super clean out the unit, I suggest
that you actually unscrew the brass drain valve on the side
of the heater and just let the water spill out in the garage


and of course the garage is going to get pretty wet...


what you do is turn off the water...and gas
and relieve the pressure

then unscrew the drain valve and let the water pour
out on the garage floor....

get yourself a piece of 1/4 inch copper pipe and flatten
the end of it down then bend it into a L shaped scraper...

with this scraper, simply reach into the unit as the water is
pouring out and stir up and scrape the crap out of the unit...

you can let all 40 gallons out or let it drain down half way
whatever you feel good with...


that will clean up the sediment problem..

change the t+p valve again and set the temp
on low or medium and see if the unit
gets too hot and overheats- you will see that the water temp
in the house is higher than it it is set at.
then you will have to address
the t-stat at that time..


if it does not over heat then you got high water pressure..
and perhaps the thermal expansion tank needs to be replaced too
as the other fellow mentioned in an earlier post.

jsut do one thing at a time

have fun

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm leaning towards the expansion tank at this time, but I'll flush it out to get rid of everything first. Here's why...

Last night it was just barely dripping, I couldn't even tell that it was. This morning, the garage is flooded again. It's really dripping out of the TP valve now. I replaced that yesterday already.

I didn't realize that the expansion tanks could go bad.

The brand is State Select.

Thanks for the help. If this doesn't work, then I guess I'll have to replace a 6-year old heater.

Knock on the expansion tank...it should sound hollow (at least on a good part of it). Take the cap off of the air valve. See if there is any water there. Using a tire pressure gauge, check the air pressure. If you get any water out, or if the whole tank sounds like it is full (it should be essentially empty), then just replace the tank. These often come with the air preset for heating systems, not for domestic hot water, so you will need to pump it up some. There is some controversy about this, but pump it up to around or slightly above the normal operating pressure of the water in your house. THen, when the hot water tank heats up, and the water expands, there is someplace for that water to go (there is no reason to have the tank partly full of water which would happen if the pressure in it was less than normal water pressure), instead of building up pressure and blowing out the TP relief valve. If your tank is not leaking, and you have a good TP valve, it makes no sense to replace the whole tank - the expansion tank is not doing its job. When the water expands while being heated, the TP valve is just doing what it is supposed to do - preventing an explosion or rupture of the tank. You might want to also check the static pressure of the water in your house, your pressure reduction valve might be shot too, allowing the house pressure to be higher than it was. My unprofessional opinion.

Draining debris-filled water heater

I had to drain a cold water heater (usually erroneously called the "hot water heater" -- if it were already hot, you wouldn't have to heat it) recently that had a bunch of sludge in the bottom from a dissolving anode rod. It drained very slowly, since the sludge quickly clogged the skimpy valve Whirpool uses. Rather than remove the valve and flood the garage, I just squirted compressed air back up the hose. This dislodged the debris in the valve and scattered it back into the tank, allowing a good flow (water + debris) for a few seconds. I kept repeating this until the tank was completely drained. Then I took the tank outside, removed the valve, and flushed it completely. Needless to say, the inlet and outlet pipes were disconnected during all this.