Five things you should consider before replacing your water heater. Now most of my videos are on the heating and air. A lot of you don't know, but I am a licensed Master Plumber here in the state of Virginia And we do a lot of water heaters from time to time and so I want to do this video If You happen to come across it if you're replacing a water heater or might be soon. Maybe a few things that you have not considered before that? maybe you should.

let's dive into it. Number One dimensions. And so you might say. Well, Dimensions Yes, dimensions on water heaters are not what they used to be.

A few years ago we saw a lot of government programs come out where they said that water heaters had to have more insulation. They had to meet certain requirements that they never had to before. and because of that, we see where there are places where a 40 gallon might be a 40 gallon water heater and they cannot fit one there anymore. Maybe the closet was super tight? Or maybe the space that they had it in? They'll no longer be able to put a 40 gallon water heater there there.

And so we see folks because of that. Had to make tough decisions. Maybe they need to make the space larger because they don't want to lower the capacity of the water heater. Maybe they had to bite the bullet and go with a smaller water heater or go tankless.

Maybe they'll have to go with a whole different type of technology or setup because of the dimensions or size requirements of that water heater. Number Two Efficiency Water heaters have come a long way. We've seen not only the insulation requirements go up, but we've also seen Technologies in the last decade or two we have water heaters with heat pumps actually installed on the water heater now. and the big thing with that is years ago when they first started coming out, it just simply were expensive.

They were quite pricey and now as time has gone on, we've actually seen that kind of come down as tank water heaters started to go up in price and heat pump water heaters I Feel like that Gap Seems to be smaller I Could be wrong. Maybe you feel differently, but used to be quite a hike to go from one to the other and now there's still a hike. but it's not as large as it used to be and so because of these newer Technologies We see folks considering that if they were to go with a more efficient system, maybe the extra money you spend, you might in the end, if you stay in the house long enough, you may actually see enough savings where you came out in the long run. And of course we're not even talking about tankless heaters and things like that.

Number Three New codes. This is something that you should consider when replacing your water heater because it may have been fine. It may have gotten by or may have been done a certain way before, but new codes, New safety requirements, new overall ways of doing things. Things get better and better.

and in some cases you may say no, They seem like they're getting worse and worse. But new codes come out. and just because you have a system that's there and you're just replacing it. In some cases, you've got to do everything up to code anyway.

and so make sure you're considering that when you're looking at your your next water heater. Consider those codes. Maybe there's you know now a requirement in your area for certain things that is unique to your area. Maybe there's a requirement for an expansion tank or some other technology such as a water shut off.

I've seen water heaters in our area, sometimes down in the crawl space, but then there's other parts of our state that the local municipalities say no way. You cannot put that down there because you're not above the flood zone or the water table and so just consider all the new codes. If you don't know the new codes, make sure you find them out or get someone that does get a licensed professional in there. So that way you are doing everything up to code and doing everything properly.

Number Four New Technologies. We've kind of touched on that and a few of these others. The crazy thing about water heaters is just like other Industries right? We've seen cars in The last two or three decades come a long way when it comes to technology. There are cars now that will almost drive themselves keeping themselves between the lines and we also see that with water heaters as well.

So not only are we talking about the technology on the efficiency side where we see heat pumps and tankless and all those sorts of things, but we now also see standard Technologies coming with the water heater themselves. They're standard in some cases where you see things like Auto water shut off water sensing it'll shut the water heater off if it senses some sort of moisture down below and the drain pan or something like that. We also see Technologies from the Wi-Fi enabled side of things where we see water heaters that can be controlled by your phone. We see water heaters that connect to the same technology that maybe you're heating and air system does and because of that, they'll know if something's wrong.

They'll get errors sent to them. They'll also be able to put it in, say, vacation mode or turn it out of vacation mode, but there's just so many Technologies out there we wouldn't even be able to fit them all into one video. I Don't think some of them have self-cleaning Technologies It's just crazy. All the different things that you can get and in a lot of cases they're standard on the water heater.

It's not something that you have to add separately. We have these circulation systems where you can have instant on-demand hot water. You don't have to sit there and wait for the cold water to dissipate before the hot water starts to come out of that faucet. Some of these systems have the instant circulating hot water abilities I Don't think that that particular technology is all that new, but some of these systems again, we're starting to see them be more of a standard item.

I guess is the way I would put it. And on some of these water heaters, we even see displays touch screen displays. They almost kind of look like a little computer there on the front of the water heater. so definitely check all that out.

The last thing I'll say if you are considering replacing your water heater is does your water heater actually need to be replaced? And the reason I go over that is I Was just talking to a customer a few weeks ago and they had never really maintained the water heater that well and was there before they even bought the house so they don't know if it was maintained very well before that. and you know, one of the things we talked about. the tank itself was still in good shape. We were able to do a few other things such as replacing the anode rod and removing sediment from the system and cleaning it out.

And if you don't have the water heater located in a an area where it would be a huge deal if it were to have a problem, that's the way this lady was. It was in a garage that if it were to leak it wouldn't have been a big deal, it would just leak outside and we were able to almost kind of rebuild the tank a little bit and get her some more life out of that system. On the flip side of that coin, you know I Just looked at a job yesterday which prompted me to do this video and the customer has the water heater located in an area that if it were to have a problem it would be a big problem and so they wanted to go ahead and get in front of that. It was a 15 year old water heater and looked like it kind of seen better days and they wanted to go ahead and get it replaced before they were to have an issue.

So anyway, that's my big five. Let me know your thoughts. Comment down below: Is there anything I miss? Is there something that you consider when you replace a water heater that we didn't go over in this video? I'd love to hear about that. Thanks for watching if you like this video.

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