Today, it’s all about what to do and what not to do with your RV water heater. Let’s jump right in.
There are primarily three different brands of traditional water heaters. This is the first—it is a Suburban water heater. These tend to be larger. It is a steel tank lined in either glass or ceramic, so it’s pretty corrosion-resistant.
The second type is an Atwood water heater—an older type. They tend to be a little smaller. They are aluminium tanks; you cannot know that you’ve got one of those when the drain hole or plug is a little nylon kind of hex nut. So that’s an Atwood type. They are aluminium tanks, and they are very resistant to corrosion.
And then the last kind is a Dometic tank. And Dometic bought Atwood and now has branded them as Dometic tanks. Those are either the aluminium like the Atwood, or the newer ones are a plastic tank, but they too will have a nylon nut.
Here, this again is a Suburban. Behind this metal nut is an anode. It’ll look like this when it’s brand new. This particular one is an aluminium anode. So, the purpose of an anode is to act as a sacrifice. So water likes to react with metal, and what we do is we put a more reactive or a softer metal as an anode in there, and the water interacts with this first rather than the surfaces within a water heater. So we would rather have it eat up this 20 or 25-dollar anode than interact with the surfaces in the tank, and then you might have to have a tank failure and a complete replacement. So 20 bucks, 25 bucks here rather than six or eight hundred dollars here.
So this is something that every RVer should do. Full-timers should do this four times a year, everybody else twice a year.
So, this is a straightforward cleaning process. Just empty up, ensure the water is off, and the water heater is off. There’s an outside switch on some of these—a good idea to turn that off. And then this pressure relief valve relieves the pressure in the tank. And then, we remove this draining bolt. And then look out. So you don’t want a hot shower. I will quickly move out of the way here because it will come out pretty fast at me. And I’ll see if I did a good job determining where the bucket should be—and it seems like I did.
So, this is the anode rod we’re looking at here. Oops. And uh, it’s pretty—it’s pretty eaten away. That isn’t good. Yeah, that isn’t good. So I would probably recommend that we replace this with a new one. Okay. And uh, luckily for us, I have one in my pocket. So we’re going to either—right over there. So we’re going to put a new one in here. We’ll show you how to do that.
And that was new as of earlier this year. I’m surprised it’s that far gone. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, usually, these bigger water heaters like this—those anodes will last anywhere from literally about a year to a year and a half. So the fact that they’ve got eaten up that quickly, uh, you know, it could be many factors. It could be the quality of the water. Having a—a water softener actually can increase the rate that the anode is uh heating up or dissolving. So it’s interesting. If anybody has a water softener, I’m not saying it’s not a reason to get one. Everybody likes soft water. Just expect that you’re going to replace that anode a little quicker.
So doing this a couple—you know, two to four times a year, depending on how often you use your RV is a good idea. Uh, drain that initial water off.
All RV water tanks or water heaters are set at 140 degrees. Generally speaking, you cannot adjust that temperature. But they mix to something easier to tolerate in the shower.
Okay, this particular one—if I look in here—we’ve got quite a bit of corrosion built up here. You can see it in the threads. I use a little one-inch—it’s called a fittings brush. You’ll find it in the plumbing department where the PVC-type plumbing is. And uh, I use it to go in there and clean out those threads so that when I put an anode back in there, it seats appropriately, it seals, and you don’t have to worry about leaks. So, having one of these in your tool kit is generally a pretty good idea. You won’t have to do it very often—every couple of years or so if you’re inspecting and cleaning out that water heater.
Generally speaking, you won’t see this type of corrosion in there. So, we will keep working on it to clean those threads up.
For the aluminium, Atwood, or Dometic type with a nylon nut—you’ve probably heard that you don’t need to put an anode in those. And uh talking about uh myth number nine, I think this is, yes—so the manufacturer will say no need to put an anode in. you’re doing cleaning in here, you’re going to start to see corrosion coming out. That corrosion is going to look like a little soft salt crystals. Many people think that it’s a calcium buildup. It’s not, But if you start to see that coming out with some prevalence, you can get an anode that fits the smaller Atwood aluminium tanks, and it’s a magnesium anode. Magnesium is much softer than aluminium, and you can put that in place of that nylon plug, which will help prolong the life of your water heater.
So don’t believe what they say — if you put an anode in within the first two years of a new water heater, an Atwood one, it will void the warranty. So make sure you’re waiting at least two years. In my experience, it’ll be about year four or five.
I use a water heater pipe cleaner; you can put these online, which helps clean out the threads. If you want to, you can stick your finger in there, and you can feel the stuff that’s inside — oh, it’s kind of like a gritty kind of sand. Yeah, I guess you see that coming out right here, right? That’s not corrosion; that’s just the anode dissolving. Okay, so there’s nothing wrong with that in there; it’s just that we want to make sure you get it out because you don’t want to have that in your water heater while you’re using hot water.
Okay, so we’ll take our water heater flush wand here, and I always like to use a sanitary hose — that’s why I use the blue one. You would never use the hose you use for your black tank flush here. This is okay. This is water you could drink or be exposed to, so we want to use as many sanitary products as possible here.
I take a Lysol wipe and bleach wipe, and I wipe down everything so it’s very sanitary. I’m going to go ahead and stick it in there. And before I do that, you’ll see that it dips down. So your water heater bottom is right down here below the drain. And when we stick our finger in here, that stuff — that sand, right — accumulates down in there. So, this wand is designed to flush it out. And that’s what we’re going to see here.
So I go in and out and twirl it around a little bit. Okay, yeah, look at all that. It’s pretty dirty. It is pretty good. So again, there’s nothing wrong with what’s coming out here. There’s nothing wrong with this water heater — what we’re taking out is normal. It’s just a part of that twice-a-year or four-times-a-year cleaning we should do as RV owners.
So, just let that wand do its business. This will take you just a few minutes. No matter the brand, these water heaters are designed to last between 15 and 20 years — okay, longer than most people who own their RV.
I’m just seeing that stuff come out here. We use it to clean off a little bit. I like to do that cleaning twice. So, if the first one gets the most out, the second one will get everything.
Okay, once I see that water being pretty straightforward, nothing else is coming out, but I know that that water heater tank is full — or clean, excuse me — I’m not seeing anything else coming out there. Maybe a little bit, but I’m pretty close to being done.
This is 10 minutes at the moment. So ideally, then, I would be doing this once a quarter or every three months. Absolutely, okay. Yep. And again, you’ll see stuff coming out — that is normal.
Again, if you have an Atwood or an aluminium tank and you start seeing things come out — meaning you didn’t have an anode in there, you didn’t add one later — that would be an indication that it’s time to put one in. Okay, that would indicate that the water is starting to interact with those Aluminum and other metals inside your tank and it’s time to put an anode in there and let that do its work. So we’re done with that. Cool. And now we’re going to put a new anode in there. And you have a specific brand of anode that you recommend.
I do, I do. So, this is made specifically for a Suburban water heater. It is a nine-and-a-half-inch aluminium anode. Camco makes it. Okay. Some cheaper ones are on the market. They usually come in two packs. They’re considerably more affordable than these, but they are a little longer, and when you install them in there, they restrict the water flow in your water heater.
And customers of mine that use those invariably will call me up the following day and say, we don’t have any water pressure. And then remember we talked about not using the cheap ones. So this is a place where you don’t want to skimp on the expense.
Okay, well, can you tell if mine—I think mine was in a two-pack from Amazon—so we’ll take a look here. Usually, you can tell by the cost. If it’s two for ten bucks, you know that’s a red flag right there. Okay. These will cost you 15 to 20, 25 bucks a piece. Okay, gotcha.
Absolutely. I can tell this came in a two-pack because the metal is black. You want the ones that have a little silver. So, if you look there, you can see the difference between the two. Okay, gotcha. So these cheaper ones heat up quite a bit faster, but they’re also an odd size. So try to avoid ones with them. That could be why it went way too fast if this was new.
Yeah, for a full-timer, these nine-and-a-half-inch ones, these Camco ones, will last you at least a year, if not a year and a half. Over time, even though you might be tempted to buy the cheaper ones, you’re likely paying the same amount. So you do get what you pay for. Yes, you do.
So you want to snug it down in there—not too tight, okay? We’re just looking to get it right there. I put a little plumber’s tape to help seal the sealing. Okay. And then the last thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to hook up the water again. Could you turn it on? It’ll fill up the tank from the bottom. We keep this pressure relief valve open—it’ll drive the air out of here. We’ll get a little spurting at the end. We’ll snap it shut and give it a press. And then we’ll look for a continuous leak here. If there is one, open it again and give it another press. I might have to do that a couple of times. Okay.
And then we’ll also look for a continuous leak down here. If you find one, you might have to tighten it or re-thread it. You might have cross-threaded it or something like that. But once the leaks stop here or the drip stops here, the drip stops here, you’re all good to go. And then that’s cleaning your water heater.
Wow, that’s the most detail I have seen anybody talk about this before, and I’ve had it done a few times, but no, that’s excellent information. It is not a complicated process at all. Like I said, 10 minutes you’re in and out, and it’s good preventative maintenance for RV owners to be doing.
Awesome. I will hook up the water; we’ll let it fill up. Sounds good. Okay, so we’ve turned the water back on. It’s filled up the tank. We’ve got the pressure relief valve open and we see the water coming out here, so we’ll snap it close and give it a press. Okay, look for a persistent drip in two places: here, which would indicate that this valve is failing, and here, which would indicate that this connection is not tight enough.
So up here, a couple of drips—I wipe them off, I don’t see anything coming out. If I did, I could probably open this up again and give it another push to seat that valve. Okay, I don’t see any drips down here other than the first one or two, so that’s nice and tight. So we are good to go, and we can go ahead and turn the water heater back on if there’s an outside switch. Okay, you, as an RVer, could go ahead and turn it on inside. Okay, your water heater is ready to be ready to use again.
