If there's water on the outside, perhaps it's not the right time for a vacation. ;-)
Usually there will be signs of corrosion or even a small leak before it lets go big time. They tend to spurt, not explode.
serious
In some areas, insurance carriers will cover water damage. Once. Then it's hard to get coverage at any price. They figure $100/yr is cheap insurance.
the
it
The other is in the attic above the garage but that'll soon be someone else's problem. I hope.
One house is plumbed with PEX, so I turn off the fixtures I'm not using.
Put the fail-safe switch after the irrigation system. They also make these sorts of valves for single point usage, like washing machines.
Can't do that. The irrigation taps off pretty much everywhere here. They even put some valves under (!) the house. That is real fun when one goes bad. Crawl, crawl, back pain, ouch.
We had those in Germany, called burst protectors. Sometimes they even worked :-)
What would be really nice: A shutoff valve and drip sensor right before the water heater. Or better yet, as part of the water heater. But that would be too smart for that industry where progress happens at a snail's pace.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Thanks, Bob, good to know. That's pretty much what Keith was also saying. So now I can sleep again at night :-)
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
So, this would be a case of "Dammed if you do, damned if you don't"?
(grins, ducks, runs)
-- Dave Platt AE6EO Friends of Jade Warrior home page:
Holy water heater!
--
John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Slow leaks me too. Last one leaked at top connections, mfg defect. I have seen drain pans installed under tanks. Good idea.
Magnesium anodes cause sulfur producing bacteria if tank is not heated sitting idle. Greg
I had a similar problem at a former rental with both gas and electric water heaters. After doing a post mortem on a failed gas water heater (with a cutting torch), the problem was obvious. There was about 1/2" of calcium carbonate on the bottom of the tank. Normally, the gas flame heats the bottom of the tank and the water conducts the heat away. However, calcium carbonate is not a good conductor of heat, making both the gas flame run longer (efficiency problem), and making the bottom of the tank run hotter because there's no water nearby to conduct away the heat. The gas flame just oxidized the tank bottom until it developed a hole.
The electric heaters failed in a similar way. There was calcium carbonate on the bottom of the tank, but that wasn't the problem. There was plenty of encrusted calcium carbonate on the two heating elements. Same problem caused by calcium carbonate having less thermal conductivity than water.
Water = 0.6 W/mK Calcite = 2.7 W/mK
Influence of Water Scale on Thermal Flow Losses of Domestic Appliances
With a gas water heater, the trick is to drain the hot water from the bottom of the take every few months to reduce the calcium accumulation. However, that doesn't do much for electric water heaters that can tolerate accumulation on the tank bottom, up to the level of the lower heating element.
Ever wonder what's the difference between a 10 year and a 6 year warranty water heater? The 10 year model has an extra sacrificial anode. No clue when to replace the anodes, but methinks every 5-10 years, depending on the warranty, might be a good plan.
Instead of replacing anodes, I installed a powered anode similar to this: The power draw is zilch. I no longer own this rental but to the best of my knowledge, the water heater has been running for 23 year so far without problems.
More ways to kill a water heater:
For extra fun, use a clamp on AC ammeter to check if there's any current going through the pipes. I got a surprise when I found some on my cold water pipes.
Hint: When you install a new electric water heater, unscrew the two elements and the sacrificial anode, smear the threads with some type of anti-seize compound, and replace. If you're worried about food safe grease, use Teflon tape instead. When you have to remove these devices many years later, it's MUCH easier.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I'd have that problem *ONCE*. Fix it while you're there.
Better than nothing. The insurance company likes them too.
The WH in a pan is a step in the right direction. I was walking through HomeDespot the other day (I seem to be doing that a *lot* lately) and spotted a whole stack of the pans on the plumbing isle. They seem to be popular. ;-)
How does magnesium cause sulphur? Unheated tanks are always a breeding ground for bacteria but no more so than pipes. OTOH, a tank with the temperature turned down, as some do to "save money", is just asking for nasties.
That *is* what we're talking about.
This is only anecdotal but we've had 4 water heaters fail in 3 different ho uses in the last 22 years. All 4 leaked slowly and 3 caused no damage as no ne of the drip trays overflowed. The first one had no tray and caused drywa ll damage. We're probably due for another in the next few years.
G²
I have this problem at camp, well water, and tank I don't often use. 130 degrees will keep bacteria from multiplying, 140 to kill them, but still stinks.
Greg
ground
One fix is to switch to aluminum anode.
Greg
They're spoiled. If you stuff them with cat food, they have no reason to go hunting. The neighborhood cat is a good example of how its done. With no mice around, everyone in the neighborhood feeds it. As soon as mice or rats appear (usually when the weather gets cold), we stop feeding the cat. He knows the clue and immediately goes into hunting mode bringing back a fair number of mice. Unfortunately, he insists on showing off his catch and dumps them at my feet or dumps the remains where I can't miss it. After a suitable interval (about
2-4 days), we return to feeding him. One problem with the previous mouser was that he would also bring in birds, snakes, lizards, etc.It's not just this cat that we've trained to keep the neighborhood clear of mice. He's about the 5th generation of mouser in the past 40 odd years. The neighborhood cat tradition and training was started before I moved into the area. The problem is that they have to be trained from birth. Too late for your spoiled cats.
One odd thing is that when the one neighborhood mouser is on the hunt, the other neighborhood cats, all of them well fed, will also start hunting. When he's done, the others stop hunting. I have no idea how or why that works, but it's quite a useful phenomenon.
Yep. I don't think it's patentable. Looks like it was done by a rat sharpening its teeth, rather than a mouse. Mice like to leave tiny puncture marks on either side of the break looking for the best place to chew. Rats just dive right in and start chewing without "testing" the cable.
The damage I was dealing with was to CAT5. I fire up the TDR (time domain reflectometer) which tells me roughly where to find the first break. Of course, it's in the most inaccessible part of the cable run. So, I pull the cable out to where I can splice the ends, and then check the TDR for the next break. On a 300+ ft run, I found breaks in 4 places. Checking the other cables, there were 4 more breaks. I reached the limit of my strength and left 2 wires open on the 4th cable. Since these were two of the wires in the cable that were not used for ethernet, I didn't care.
After driving down their road about a mile, I look in the rear view mirror to see one of their cats slowly rising from the equipment padding blanket in the back seat. Turn around, drive 1 mile back up the hill, dump the cat out, etc. Upon arrival at my next customer, they notice that I'm wearing two different shoes. Maybe I should have stayed home yesterday.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
ground
OK, but shutting off the heater will not increase bacteria growth, above what would normally grow in pipes. The problem is water heated somewhat above body temperature. As you note, 140F kills the nasty stuff.
[snip]
My old cat (Manx) was fond of bringing in field mice from outdoors, then chasing them throughout the house until he tired of the game, then he ignored them. So I'd have to periodically get out the hose for the built-in super VAC and pull plastic containers off the shelf in the pantry, one-by-one, until the mouse peeked out to see what the noise was all about... quite amusing sound as he made the trip all the way to the big canister in the garage ;-)
Then that cat met a hawk, who tried to pick him up by his ears, tearing them severely. The he wouldn't go outside, nor use a litter box, so he became history :-( ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
I don't want our cats to eat mice. It could give us toxoplasmosis, a truly bizarre infection. People with toxo have greatly elevated risks from death by accident and suicide. Toxo survives, in part, by changing the *behavior* of mice to make it more likely they will get eaten by cats. It seems to change human behavior, too. I'm weird and reckless enough already.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
As
ow
apparently toxo alters the brain of males rats and mouse so they get sexually aroused by the smell of cat urine, that is one crafty strategy
and remember to cook your pork well, you can get it from that too
-Lasse
Next to impossible in this location, unless you are retired and have a whole lot of time on your hands. Which I don't :-(
It doesn't help all that much if the folks are all at work and then come home, wondering why the new carpet is squishing.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
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