I changed out both elements in my electrc water back in late August. Had to change the bottom one out again today.
Jesus, how bad does your sacrificial anode look?
going from that, probably ate smooth up
Have you checked your sacrificial anode? If it’s gone, this will keep happening.
Anodes protect against corrosion. They don’t do anything for hard water scale.
That’s not entirely true: sacrificial anodes attract and collect calcium and magnesium as well as preventing rust.
The prevention of rust does slow scale accumulation because rust is a rough porous surface that scale likes to stick to. But other than that (anodes also are rough porous surfaces) I’m not aware of any way they actively reduce it. Maybe the electronic ones, but that’s out of my wheelhouse (and they aren’t sacrificial).
Anodes for the anode gods!
I have never heard of this before. Thanks for mentioning it.
The sacrificial anode is there to protect the steel tank. It lasts a long time. This is a hard water problem as everyone else is saying, and a water softener would solve the issue.
*Edit: check the very bottom of your tank since you have the elements out. It most likely has a pile of calcium and other minerals sitting on the bottom.
-a plumber
Steel tank, not copper?
Steel tanks, that’s why the sacrificial anode is there so the water eats it away instead of the tank.
In NA, steel is standard. I’ve never seen a copper hotwater tank in Canada. I think that used to be somewhat common in Europe, but copper is freakin’ expensive now so that’s gone by the wayside, as well.
Hard water makes the anode rod dissolve faster
Have you inspected the anode rod?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hot+water+heater+aluminum+anode+rod&t=canonical&iax=images&ia=images
Also check out sites of sediment build up
This is a hard water problem
How do I change it to easy water?
Hire Phil Collins
I’ll take some hard water
Absolut-ly
You really need to invest in a system that softens your water.
Or just a good filter system.
You can’t filter out ions of calcium like that. A huge reverse osmosis system for the entire home would be prohibitively expensive. I used to live in an area with very hard water and everyone had water softeners. You only need to buy the salt every few months and it’s not too bad. RO filters were only connected to a tap on the side of the sink in the kitchen - those membranes aren’t cheap.
RO also puts about four times as much water down the drain as it filters. A whole house RO filter is extremely wasteful. You don’t need to be filtering every toilet flush.
Isn’t that exactly what a water heater does?
A water heater heats your water.
away with your fancy mumbo jumbo and wizard speak this here board is for regular talk
TIL
You are technically right that the water heater softens the water a bit by precipitating the minerals around the heating element and thereby removing them from the water. But that is energy inefficient and expensive, since you normally don’t use a water heater to soften your water but rather to get warm water. So putting another system in front of the heater that softens it first is better than replacing the heat element every so often.
no a water heater heats the water.
a watersoftener removes dissolved minerals from water
This one definitely did both.
Right but a water heater isn’t designed to remove minerals from water. Just to heat it.
I’m guessing the inside of your tank looks just like this and swapping new heating elements in isn’t going to fix that. Maybe try flushing it out first?
With vinegar or some other descaler
I’m not sure of vinegar is quite powerful enough. Somehow this seems like bigger problem
Vinegar is perfectly fine for that. With a bigger amount of minerals you just need more vinegar and time.
Is anyone drinking this water?
When is the last time it got tested?
You ought to do a send away test. It’s about $200 bucks on Amazon.
Check to see if your local government does this instead.
If it did, the heater wouldn’t look like this.
Depending on the state, some agencies will test drinking water samples for a small fee that is much less than $200. In Michigan, the department of health did it for me. This is likely hard water. And if it’s from a well, it should be tested every so often anyways.
I’m presuming it’s well water because city water wouldn’t do that unless there was a major, widespread problem.
$200 is for the full array of tests. VOCs, heavy metals, bacteria. Good to get the full testing done at least once.
That’s why you should have a gas water heater if you have hard water. Electric units get wrecked by scale, regardless of a water softener.
But it’s a greenhouse gases contributor - electric is better. Check that anode commented below.
Heat pump would be best
Probably still would get issues with hard water though. OP needs a softener.
Honestly, water this hard should be fixed at the water treatment facility that provides his water. This much after just a couple of months is insane.
OP could have a well.
I’d think a well owner would be a bit more informed about water purification.
Lol I know people with a well and they never even knew they had a well they never had to touch it and never thought about it was the funniest shit when their pump went out and were confused why they didn’t have water
You would think that…
Electric ain’t better if you have to replace it constantly. Think of the emissions to produce these parts.
The emissions to produce a single heating element off a factory line are probably a lot smaller than keeping a jug of water in your house hot by burning natural gas off and on all day every day forever
Cool, when those heating elements are shipped over here via bunker fuel. I’ll bet a boatload of those coming over is more emissions than running a NG burner for a decade
And so we come to the eventual argument. An electric water heater is going to keep a jug of water in your house hot by running off and on all day forever. Where did that electricity come from?
A lot of the electricity probably came from burning natural gas at the power plant, and then some of that (~5%) gets lost in transmission. If we assume the natural gas plant is 60% efficient at turning gas into electricity, then an electric heating element in a hot water tank at your house would be about 55% efficient.
A typical gas furnace is about 80% efficient at turning gas into hot fluid, and a good one can reach 95% efficiency.
Depending on the fuel mix of your local grid, there’s a good chance that burning natural gas at home will result in less pollution than using electric resistance heaters, either for heating water or the air inside your home during winter. Places like Washington state that generate most of their electricity from hydroelectric power plants will be exceptions.
However, heat pumps can be higher than 100% efficiency. They don’t use electricity to generate heat, they just move heat from one place to another. You’ll produce fewer emissions overall by using an HVAC heat pump to heat your house, and a heat pump water tank for hot water. Even if you live in a place like Canada, you can reduce emissions by installing a dual-fuel system that will use electricity to run the heat pump weather permitting, and fall back to using gas when the outdoor temperature goes too far negative.
Using heat pumps to move heat from outside, to inside your house, to inside your hot water tank is more efficient than using gas to heat your home and water, even when the electricity to run the heat pump is generated by burning natural gas.
I don’t own a home but if I ever do I would love to put in a heat pump and solar panels. Great detailed response.
In my case, a mix of fossil fuel and renewable resources that on the whole are significantly less carbon-intensive per unit of energy than straight up burning methane in my house
I wish we had European style water heaters at the tap. But that’s not safe. You should see what I find in hospital infrastructure.
Anodes protect against corrosion. They don’t do anything for hard water scale.
Looks like some types can help with hard water too
https://plumbingnav.com/water-heaters/anode-rod-by-water-type/
