So, as if just shelling out $11k for a complete tear-off roof and all new windows in my house inside of 3wks, my water heater also decided it was time to go all “FUCK YOU” on me. It’s some POS U.S. Craftmaster apparently by American Water Heaters and/or Whirlpool depending on manufacture date…long story short it has nothing but poor reviews and a class-action lawsuit. Replacement burner assembly is free of charge if you were the original purchaser, of course I was not. Need to replace the tank as a whole to get rid of this thing. Best Price I can find is a 3yr tank for about $307. UGH.
anyone have a guy or supplier that I’ll get a better deal through? I would install myself.
I picked up cards and a coupon from Derek and grabbed one from lowes. 50gal with 6yr warrenty was around 400. with cards and a coupon it came to about 320 before tax
I have a top of the line 12yr warranty 40gallon sitting in my garage. I got it for $150 from CIL Liquiudators as it has a dent in the side. I planned on installing it but have not done so yet. I am sure there will be another auction by the time I get around to it. You can have it for the $150 I paid for it.
I had a American Water Heater with a bad thermocouple. Found out later it had reverse threads and they do not make replacements. I bought a replacement burner assembly from Lowes for about $65.
that’s an awesome price…is the warranty basically void with it being an auction/scratch&dent purchase?
I did call the number on the side of the tank yesterday…that’s exactly what I am dealing with it seams. They did say that if lowes doesn’t have the replacement retrofit kit you bought, that they can sell it to me over the phone for $34 direct. They also emailed me some procedures on making sure certain parts of the burner are clean and where the filter is in the tank to clean…which I did last night and so far it hasn’t gone out since 7pm yesterday. fingers crossed…I’d rather not have to swap this tank until it’s warmer so I can shut down the gas for a day.
I doubt that the warranty is void, how would GE know where it was purchased. As far as they know it was bought at Home Depot (it was a home depot return item) I can get a couple pictures and a part number off of it if you like.
that would be great. my major concern so far is fitting it in…I don’t have much room to work with the vent pipe on top, and mine is a 40gal. I’ll measure my height on lunch and report back.
thanks jimmyfloyd…it appears national fuel is in fact the only utility company not offering a rebate for energy star appliance installs. @tpgsr My current vent means the outlet on the top of the tank must be 55"max from the floor. my tank is also directly next to the chimney (which is obv where the vent terminates) and the centerline of the vent would be 10.5" off the face of the chimney.
I checked on lunch and the pilot was out again. So I’m def. looking to replace the whole thing. When I called the number on the tank they looked it up and it’s an 11-yr old tank that was only a 6yr rated tank so I guess it’s time.
Bradford White is not cheap but is a great hot water heater. A plumber buddy of mine said its the Cadillac of hot water heaters. If I wasn’t going tankless soon, that’s what I would get.
Any particular reason? Unless you have a big family that you never ever want to run out of hot water (which most don’t anyways), they are not that magic bullet people once thought. You may never see the savings from them compared to a traditional tank style. The tank style will also never have the surging that tankless can experience.
I paid under 1000 for my tankless when I installed and received most of it back as a tax credit. My RGE bill is $20-30 less a month since. I installed it in 2009 when I had my roof torn off (and chimney removed) I have had ZERO problems with it. If I had to do it over I would still have chosen this option.
Is that propane? You’d have to be using an absurd amount of hot water to get to $20-$30 a month in savings by going from tanked to tankless on natural gas.
In the summer time my natural gas bill is around $30 a month. I’m using summer as a starting point because it removes the big demand item, heating the house, from the equation. We’ve got a basic old tank hot water heater that uses natural gas. We’ve also got a gas dryer and a gas range in the kitchen. 3 people in the house and I’ve got one of those illegal in the US shower heads that dumps a crazy 6+ GPM (2.2 is the US max) so we use a decent amount of hot water. Assuming I was using a 30% more efficient tankless system and ignoring the dryer and range natural gas usage that still would only get me $9 a month. Considering we use the gas dryer a lot it’s probably less than $7 a month.
I went with a Navien tankless back in 09 and LOVE it! I think. I got it though my friend at VP and it is great. I went with tank less I was have a HE furnance, the chimney needed to be re done, so I decided to knock the chimney down and go tankless. Ended up being a savings over having to redo the chimney. Anyways, I love the fact that I can have a load of clothes in the washing machine on hot cycle, the dish washer, and do back to back to back showers and NEVER worry about running out of hot water. It also seems to work better when it is winter and colder.
I don’t know what people mean by “surging” as I have never experienced that since it’s been installed. I will say thins though-I need to run the water for a bit before I get hot water. But,I wasn’t about to open up the walls and do a return line from my furthest faucet to eliminate said problem. In new construction-no problem. Existing-Fuck it. I have been thinking of buying the smallest hot water tank I can find, like 15 or 20 gallons, to install before the Navien, and eliminate that issue.
