I'm not saying that The Villages doesn't have hard water, but compared to the overall country, it is not anywhere near as bad as the water softener salespeople will tell you. Look at the water hardness maps. There is a large portion of the country that has much harder water than The Villages.

Take a small scrap of window screen. Place it at the end of the hose (when draining a water heater). It’ll show the sediment. The issue with flushing using faucets is that they have aerators, which are notorious for trapping sediment. Of course you can always remove the aerators and flush them. Just throwing this info out for homeowners.

I do believe cold water enters the tank through a pipe that extends almost to the bottom and hot water is taken out near the top of the tank. Hot water, after all, rises. So you should expect to get no sediment out from the hot water faucets in your home.

If you turn on all of the hot water faucets full blast, after a few minutes, all of the hot water will be gone and you will create enough turbulence in the tank to flush out some of the loose sediment. The drain valve at the bottom of the tank is designed to drain the tank, not to create a flushing action. The drain valve is way too small to be very effective at flushing out sediment.

I've flushed pounds and pounds of minerals out of my tank over the years using the drain valve. The driveway gets covered in white crystals. The cold water coming in at the bottom of the tank stirs them up.

IMO the scale water at bottom of tank, whey you open up the drain the scale water get drained. I notice color difference for couple mins. IMO If you let the scale set in bottom long enough that’s when you get build up. IMO that’s why recommend draining.

instant gas hot water heater
 

has anyone replaced their hot water heater with a gas instant hot water heater? if so, who did you use to buy it from and install it? do you love it?

I did as a DIY job. Tankless heaters require a 3/4" gas line. Most tank WH have a 1/2 line. If that's the case for you consider how far you have to go to plumb a 3/4" gas line.

I purchased the heater from Amazon.

Wow! A water heater that’s 17 years old must be close to the end of life. Usually, you have to start thinking about replacing your water heater after 10 years. It’s better to replace the water heater before it quits working and floods the area than waiting for the failure to occur. That way, you can control the outage, while the water heater is being replaced.

Otherwise, with Murphy’s Law, the water heater will most likely fail on a holiday weekend, or at the most in opportune time. The rough ballpark cost is about $2,000 for a tank water heater and $4,000 for a tankless water heater. The tankless water heaters tend to be best for large families where everyone is using hot water at the same time. But the tankless water heater must be designed for the maximum hot water load.

The tankless water heaters might be more practical if the house is unoccupied for months during the year. If you only have electricity, then when there’s an electricity outage, you instantly have no hot water, unless you have an electric generator.

The tankless water heaters tend to last a little longer than conventional tank water heaters. But the cost tends to never break even for the extra cost of the tankless water heater, during the water heater’s lifetime.

When the water heater is being installed, it’s important that the threaded connector is not soldered while it is connected the water heater’s threads. The heat from the soldering reduces the lifetime of the threads near the water heater.

Our water heater flooded our garage because it was installed improperly at the 6 year point. Fortunately, the threaded pipe that broke could be removed and replaced. That repair cost was $295. We’ll start thinking about replacing the water heater in a few years when it’s about ten years old.

Replace the zinc rod that attracts minerals and slows tank decay, unless you have a well, never. Drain tank of sediment by opening drain at the base of tank, nope, the cheap valves will either leak or break at a higher concern than any advantage. Tanks can last 5 years, or 25 years and it usually depends on demand so in TV with two adults they can last a long time. Visually inspect your tank when passing by and look and listen for changes. If you have a concern, get an inspection. Tankless natural gas water heaters can go out of adjustment and have more stringent maintenance requirements; however, the rule of thumb is the same stop look and smell. If you have a change in the delivery of hot water from any natural gas tank call for service. Remember if you call a fox (service person) into your hen house eventually, he will eat your chickens. 35 Years working on and around natural gas equipment.

Mostly agree, I never had problem with drain valve, but maybe I’ve been lucky ������. I was on well water for several years, no water heater lasted over 12 years. When I brought water heater I alway then ( don’t know if the warranty water heaters now that long?) brought 12 year warranty ones cause I knew I would be getting free one before warranty ran out. It was electric so it was easy to replace.

An old anode rod is easily replaced. The old rod, more than 4 yrs old will probably be nothing more than a wire, which is easily bent to remove. Sometimes even the wire is gone. You find nothing under the plug. Purchase a segmented anode rod of aluminum on a stainless steel wire. Thus it will be easy to install.

The hardest part is removing the old rod. I used an electric impact wrench. Thus the tank did not rotate.