Water heater repair and servicing tips and tricks , I repair test service and sell used water heaters. I sell parts perform water heater installations and service used water heaters out in the field! I'm not a plumber! But I do "water Heater" related plumbing All parts are used all water heaters are used Every client knows this when I am performing repairs! Thanks for watching !! Questions are welcome! Thumbs up or down would be appreciated! Consider Subscribing!!
I'm not a plumber! But I do "water Heater" related plumbing
@@car-u-fix-it8070 : yes - installing that replacement water heater was a pain in the ass took three of us just to get it down the hillside, but I didn’t want to let this one go to waste plus, I was really curious what was going on with it
pretty cool to see your operation thanks a lot very informative ! . dont think Ill copy that not that I dont think its a great little buis , its just more involved but I am getting involved in some repair work always shied away but gaining knowledge
@@jeffreyplumber1975 yeah I don’t blame you. It’s a lot of work sometimes I just do it on the side. It’s not full-time. Sometimes the Water Heaters need a lot of work and sometimes they barely need any work. Thanks again for watching and commenting. I appreciate it!! so you can see how that little battery pack really helps diagnose issues quickly because once you can give the valve voltage and it responds accordingly you can rule out the valve immediately then you know its pilot assembly related. I want to see if I can make one for a Mechanical Valve like a Rogers and White do something I can hook up gives me 30 mil volts and I can test those valves and rule those valves out those valves don’t fail very often but sometimes.!
Had the 5-flash code since June, but with this South Texas summer, there was no pressing need for scalding hot tap. But after a few battles with a leftover bacon greased skillet, it was time to give replacing the temperature sensor a go! Bought the part off of Amazon ($50) and followed the first part of your EXCELLENT video to a T. Everything went as smoothly as planned, and clean skillets and hot lava showers are the back in rotation. Thank you sir!! 👍👍
@@adventureoflinkmk2 : yeah I don’t see why not you just need to get the voltage down below one volt and it needs to be DC. You can use a resistor to lower the voltage. I believe we used a 100 ohm resistor. It’s been a while since we did it.. but if I remember correctly, the resistance on the connector to the circuit board and the wiring connector was about 13 ohms so you use ohms lotta figure out resistance to the voltage. But I can tell you it doesn’t work on every single valve. There’s a few Bradford White, valves and some Aerosmith valves that it just didn’t seem to work on. We built one with a potentiometer that allow us to control the voltage sort of turn it up and turn it down and stabilize it a little bit more and that seem to do it, but it broke. You also need to measure the resistance of the batteries. Or whatever battery pack you want to use I just know the higher the voltage the I imagine the larger the resistors going to need to be cut it down be pretty convenient if they just sell batteries that use less than a volt.! Thanks for watching!
@@jeffreyplumber1975 - yeah that’s the thing those wiring harnesses even though they look good and you’re able to stick a probe inside there and get a measurement from them. Wasn’t good. The thermal pile was healthy. It just was not transmitting that electricity to the at the wiring harness. I also used my battery device to confirm the existing circuitboard was good, then I tested that same thermopile wiring harness against a different circuit board and it’s still wouldn’t come up so I tracked it down to the wiring harness. I see that quite a bit. Everything looks good but you can’t get the board to work then it’s the wiring harness. I’m gonna try I think in the future, just extend it cause it’s a lot less work and and see if I can get a good connection out of that wiring harness with some connectors because yeah, it had very good voltage. It’s always nice to cross. Check it against a different Circuit Board in case it’s the Circuit Board. It’s really just just ruling parts out.
Hot water circ line. since I see the valve is open it might actually function as a gravity feed recirculation system it can actually work without a pump. capping the pipe is a option however then you have a dead leg which can lead to nastiness like legionella AKA legionaires disease. Ive been told that a gravity hot water reirc system isnt legal anymore something to look into if anyone has concerns over this type stuff
I use a microfiber rag to wipe the flame arrestor screen…I’ve even used a duster …the fluffy kind….it works great as it comes in a stick form. Thanks for the videos
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for watching. Yeah, I have one of those pipe cleaner type dusters. It’s really long that’s helpful. I find just a wet rag if you push the water through there it’ll kind of wash it out a little bit. You get it from the top first, and then you chase it from the bottom and then go back to the top. Sometimes you can wipe all the suit off of the top of the combustion chamber and then I’ll help as well if there’s a lot of white city smoke powder there. also compressed air helps a lot. I do have a portable tank. It’s just empty, but it typically takes a few years to clog up one of those arrestors. Thanks again.
What do think people do when they work on water heaters? They change parts. Perhaps this content isn't for you. Thanks for watching , and commenting I hope you find what your looking for.
Those Honeywell error codes are a joke. How does it know its a "bad burner"? It has a tiny little heated resistor. If that resistor doesn't heat up (or cool down) according to internal timers depending on burner on, or burner off- the valve throws a code and shuts down. Adds nothing safety-wise over pilot and thermopile, but adds complexity and creates tons of failures and unnecessary replacements- like this. Nothing wrong with that burner assembly. I know this because I took out my burner, inspected it, bench ran it, and showed no leaks and even flame. Regardless, thanks for this. Good stuff. Where can mortal men (non-professionals) get replacement motherboards?
@@Leoneidas - yeah I would try eBay. You could probably get a pretty cheap used valve there or maybe like your local plumbing store or something sometimes they have an area where people discard old water heater so you can just pop up Circuit Board off of one of those. Yeah that’s total bullshit. There is no sensor for the Burner Assembly. There’s just the chamber sensor and the thermal pile that’s it. I used Replace Burner assemblies when I first saw Code sixes and it wouldn’t go away the way to get rid of it. Get rid of the Circuit Board.
@@richardkettering9532 it depends where you purchase the valve from I’ve seen them as cheap as $65 on Amazon and I’ve seen them go for as much as almost $300 new that’s just for the cost of the part labor to replace valve is $75. I’m not sure what other plumbers charge.
2:06 Is the difference between WT8860 vs WT8840 , the WT8860 accepts the chamber temperature sensor while the WT8840 does not? So it sounds like I can use a WT8840 instead of a WT8860 ? I’m using it as a temporary part until the WT8860 arrives.
@@airliu1 yeah I apologize. I don’t have the all the part numbers memorized for all the different circuit boards that are out there, but basically I’m not going say every single Circuit Board is identical because I know there are some differences, but you can enter them and they will cause the valve to function if you’re putting a circuitboard on your valve that does not accept a Chamber Sensor and your Water Heater uses a Chamber Sensor your removing that safety feature, I don’t recommend that- because that wouldn’t be safe. Sounds like he switched to Circuit Board over the one that doesn’t except a Chamber Sensor in the meantime until you wait for the part to come in in order to get hot water you’ll probably be OK ! Thanks for watching
@@thewaterheaterfactory thanks for the detailed explanation. I appreciate having hot water again and thank you for your sharing your experience and videos.
@@ganeshnarayan5505 : I’ve seen a lot of Chamber Sensor go out on the reams. I don’t know that they particularly fail after five years. Usually, it’s the valve that goes bad or the circuitboard for the valve possibly the thermal Pile or the chamber sensor. if it’s still under warranty, which you should get a six year warranty if you contact Rheem typically they’ll send you a replacement Chamber Sensor phone number is on the water heater. They’re on the East Coast so you definitely want to call before 10 PM Pacific standard time.
@@user-ff6tx4ud8c - Bradford white water heaters have a screw on surface mount thermal switch - www.supplyhouse.com/Bradford-White-415-43676-03-290-Red-Resettable-Thermal-Switch
@@samanthablake4236 - also sometimes your manual that comes with the water heater will have a parts list in the back and then you can kind of look up part numbers
Yeah, that’s crazy. Sounds like maybe it wasn’t getting enough fresh air RN able to get all the gases out but usually it doesn’t take two weeks for that to show up it pretty much happens right away within 24 hours to 48 hours. That’s a really weird one. I’m glad your contractor took care of you, thanks for watching!
I live in a region where the water is acidic and creating pin-hole leaks in the copper piping that runs from the solar collector to the water heater. Is it possible to replace those pipes with PEX, or would there be issues with things like fittings?
Our 16 year old Rheem HTW began to leak, so I had a contractor plumber come over and install a brand new complete unit. The original venting stayed in place, it was clean, all good. Worked great...for two weeks and one morning, no hot water. I tried to re-light the pilot, no go. Called the installer and he came right over. The TRD glass was blown. He could not explain why it blew and tripped the draft damper, but he put in a new TRD assembly, relit, and all was good. For one month. Same thing happened. Again, he came right over with a phone call. We got on the phone with Rheem, they insisted we had customer-related draft problem (the stack). We did not, my plumber and myself could see that. Being the ace contractor he is, he drove to his supplier, picked up a complete brand new hot water heater (another identical Rheem), and installed it. That was a year and a half ago and it works flawlessly. Somewhere in the build of the first unit there was a restriction in the draft. Rheem did not reimburse the supplier to my knowledge, but I did not have to pay a dime.
@@thewaterheaterfactory Thank you. I was able to get it lit again and tried your very hot, hot, pilot 15 second reset. Been working for about a day now. I'll contact you if it happens again.
Id like to do what you are but space is a factor gutted 2 at a plumbing supply house yesterday they looked beautiful a rheem and a B/W . been tinkering I gotta build stock up . trying to figure out if I can use differant brands they look the same I dont see why a complete valve assembly wouldnt be universal maybe its the length. If I get enough parts and set up test station I was thinking maybe test out parts and have a stock of only good parts . the little milivolt power source is something I gotta work on too the resistor and couple of batterys is pretty easy, and I gotta figure out why a decent connection cant be insured on the valve with thermopile and new ends
@@jeffreyplumber1975 - yeah I see what you’re saying. It’s a little embarrassing when you end up using parts that don’t work on a service call. I don’t really worry about it because I know that I have at least one in my vehicle and I don’t have the free time to sit down and test every part and put together, a go kit of solid reliable parts. The advantage to having that is it cuts down on the amount of work that you have to do in the field in case you run into bad parts, but you make up for that by spending your free time doing all that testing at home or wherever. Usually I get pretty lucky. I would say nine out of 10 parts that I just grabbed for my truck work and work well every now and then I’ll get one that’s bad. I’ll chase that up with one that’s bad it happens! it’s not like I’m charging hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a Service Call so if the owner or the tenant complains you get what you pay for. Yeah, it takes time to build up parts. I guess the point I’m trying to make with these videos as it’s actually pretty easy to fix these water heaters. All they really need is replacement parts and they don’t even have to be off of the same Water Heater you don’t want to get too crazy with that concept, I’ve seen pretty wild repairs, as long as the heater isn’t leaking chances are it could be repaired pretty quickly.
I currently have the 5 flashes on my heater. I noticed about two weeks ago, the hot water in the house was not very hot anymore. I did not notice the 5 flashes till after I did a flush of the heater. BTW, the flush did not reveal excess sediment. Will the heater function at all with the 5 flashes?? Is the sensor that is faulting in the burner or the one in back of the valve??? The burner seems to be working fine. Thanks!!
@@7080nik yeah it’s hard to say it may still function but eventually if you’re getting a fire flash, that means there’s a problem with the therm and it’s not determining the water temperature and responding to a properly
Exact same thing with the exact same result. Same machine, not pumping water to the washer arms but everything else seems to work. Took in all apart, wasn't too dirty, checked continuity through the float switch, didn't find anything wrong, didn't repair anything. Hooked it back up and it runs fine. I swear sometimes machines get lonely and just want a little attention.
@@Miata822 yeah weird - I’m using less soap and not as many dishes- ran about 1/2 a gallon of vinegar through it after I worked on it ! Thanks for watching!
good advice on the gas connector I think they are good for about 40k btu on a 2foot connector but i never seen a pro install that size technically a 2 foot is good on most 50 gal If someone didnt really care you might be able to cheat it and go over 40k btu I try to do it right though I seen some micky mouse installs its just too easy for me to run the correct size line I carry extras i just do installs trying to learn repair athough
If you ever get a mechanical gas valve with the copper thermocouple, there's an exposed lead in the backside of the valve that you can gator clip your test lead to, other one to the copper surface. This way you can measure the mV while its hooked up in operation without removing the copper thermocouple from the gas valve 👍
Wonder if the inner pins of that thermopile clip were somehow damaged and not making good contact inside the valve. Millivolt test with multimeter checked out cause you could make better contact with your leads..? Interesting one, always enjoy watching your videos!
Yes I have seen this issue at least 10 times with the wiring harness to circuit board not sending voltage when another voltage source sends voltage fine so it’s not the circuit board. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for this Video! I help older ones with their home issues. This helps me help them. Many can't even pay me but if I can help them get on with their daily activities that is my reward. Thanks again!
Yeah, I keep all the old parts off the leaky water heaters. I got boxes and boxes and boxes of parts everywhere way too many really. And then I do a hydrostatic pressure test on the water heaters to make sure they don’t leak. I pump them up to about 220 psi and let them sit for an hour if the gauge stay still the water heater is good, then I use the different parts to put it back together and sell it. It took a couple years. Give me Water Heaters all the time. I really got more parts than I need to be honest with you, but I do run low on certain parts so I sell parts and then I sell used Water Heaters I do service calls and then I also Install Water Heater those are my four. Thanks again for watching
Nice Having a stock of parts really makes a differance I need to start robbing parts off bad heaters and I could pick up a few repairs its just a PIA to go out and then have to buy parts ill have 2 or 3 hours tied up and part prices are crazy high. you took some dedication . Im guessing you had to buy some heaters that were waranteed basicaly scrapped gotta have some space to gut them and test for leaks many props to you for the hard work and sharing with us!
the where? not sure what your question is , if the drain valve breaks off the tank will drain out - If you replace with 3/4" pvc pipe and cap - you can use the cap to drain the tank when needed. Thanks for watching and commenting!
If yours was stuck and you want to drain, and you end up breaking it off all the water will just pour out. If your spigot is clogged try hooking up a hose, get towels and then untwist the spigot top and poke with a skewer. Sometimes it's just a chunk blocking it, so then water will come out of the top area but you can twist the top back on , draining as normal. Before I tried to remove the plastic, i got a gutter diverter from lawn and garden 25' for about $12. The water tank was on the ground floor and i let it drain out the back door. If you are in a basement look around to see if you have a floor drain nearby and use a shorter length to divert water to it. If you have to bail, know a bucket will not fit under a water heater on the floor. You need short sided plastic bins like dishwashing pans. You then dump into buckets and out or to toilet. You can use under the bed long ones ( they hold around 6- 8 gal) to rest your arms, but with water they can't be lifted. You will need a few people to help run the buckets back and forth.
Had a rheem from 2015 to 2024. Never had a problem until it very recently rusted out. I bought the same exact model in June. Its giving me 7 flashes already...
