Water Heater Maintenance,
Smelly Hot Water Solutions,
Troubleshooting and Anodes

This site comprises 450 pages of information on water heater maintenance, safety and troubleshooting, and it's been around for more than 20 years. Key sections comprise:

• Water Heaters 101 -- Learn all about how water heaters are made and work, and water heater anodes, dip tubes, drain valves, T&P valves, pipe nipples, safety, tankless, choosing a heater, and emergency preparedness
• Water Heater Maintenance -- Learn how to prefit/retrofit a heater for longest life, what tools you need, and what things you need to do to make it easy to service a tank going forward
• Water Heaters in Apartments -- Residential and commercial tanks and recirculation systems. Maintenance here can save money, water damage and grief
• Troubleshooting -- A glossary of water heater terms, questions often asked in our old forum, The Tank, indexed, and a section called Quick with answers to common problems
• Smelly Hot Water -- We know as much or more as anybody in North America about this problem. We know what works in which situations and what doesn't work at all
• Anodes -- Some are sacrificial anodes, some are powered anodes, some are for maintenance, some are for odor. All are important. We also sell products to expel water heater sediment, and Larry Weingarten's Water Heater Workbook
• News About Water Heaters -- Mostly recalls of products
• The Future of Water Heating -- Presentations of interest from the ACEEE's annual Hot Water Forum
• Fun Stuff -- How can anything about water heaters be fun? You'll see.....

There is a lot of free information here, but we also offer economical consultations that can save you time, money and grief. Our focus is solving problems, not merchandising. It might be something you buy, but it also might be something you do

One more thing: we provide detailed instructions with our products, but also, we provide customer service. If you run into issues, e-mail us, and we'll probably have answers that will solve your problem

Water Heaters 101

This used to be called Water Heater Basics and that's how we often think of it. It's a giant section, so we won't describe it all right here, but key topics include:

• Water Heater Sediment or Scale
• Sacrificial Anodes
• Powered Anodes
• Safety
• Tankless Heaters
• What Kills Water Heaters
• Choosing a Water Heater

Water Heater Maintenance

Now an offshoot of WH 101, these topics are:

• Know-How, a step-by-step guide to prefitting/retrofitting a water heater
• Preventive Maintenance Tasks, which includes additional chores to make it easy service a heater
• Tools, telling you just which ones you need

Water Heaters in Apartments

If you can save money maintaining ONE water heater, think how much you save maintaining a thousand! Or commercial tanks that cost thousands of dollars. Includes pages on:

• Optimal setup of commercial and residential tanks
• Inspections
• Optimal setup of recirc pumps. If those are plumbed improperly, they'll airlock and burn out.
• How to service a commercial water heater

Troubleshooting

This section has a variety of resources. One requires explanation. For 19 years, we ran a problem-solving forum called The Tank. Eventually people stopped posting there, so we removed it, but at the end, there were 5,000 topics and 20,000 posts. Tanklets takes the most important of these and continues in static HTML pages with a subject index. Look there first for answers to problems.

• Tanklets
• Not Enough Hot Water -- A common complaint with several causes
• Quick -- Quick tips, fixes and caveats
• Lingo -- Our glossary of water heater terms
• Smelly Hot Water -- We know its several causes and fixes
• Consulting -- Read anything on the site for free, but if you need to ask, you need this
• Peroxide Fix -- A cheap but temporary solution to smelly hot water

We ARE a business, so we sell solid and flexible magnesium sacrificial water heater anodes for replacement when your factory anode is consumed so that you don't find yourself with a leaking water heater. Also, we are one of the very few who sell curved dip tubes for sediment (also known as scale) control; sediment buildup contributes to water heater failure and electric element failure, and sometimes contributes to odor issues.

And we have solid and flexible aluminum/zinc anodes and powered anodes (impressed-current) to use in smelly water heaters. And other stuff, too, such as sediment flush kits and Larry Weingarten's Water Heater Workbook.

Random Musings

Everybody has opinions. A few are able to get theirs published. I got tired of having mine bounce around inside my head. Read if you dare. Not about water heaters, anyway.