Upgraded gas water heater to electric

beemerphile1 wrote:
Does the element also act as an anode or are you just sacrificing the life of the tank?

I just did this upgrade on my Atwood tank, and it's well worth the effort for a full-timer. Since the Dometic doesn't have an anode rod to begin with this issue was not a concern.

With the supplied parts in the kit, you are supposed to replace the drain valve with the small 425 watt element and run a regular sized anode. The larger element would replace the anode, so looked around and I found a company that makes a 1/4 and 3/8 anode.

My end result will be larger element in the anode plug and replacing the drain with the small anode.

As a side note, my tank does have two large anode ports. One in front and one in back, above the circuit board. However, the front side anode was galled and took a breaker bar to remove. The rear one looks like it was plugged at the factory and hasn't been pulled since. I tried the breaker bar on the back one and the whole tank wanted to turn. I am afraid to put an impact on it and break the tank, so that is why I hunted down the smaller anode. If I could have pulled the larger plug on the back, then I would have just put the heater element in there and left the front with the regular anode and drain valve.

Jose

Does the element also act as an anode or are you just sacrificing the life of the tank?

Roy You do NOT want to run any resistance heat from your battery, it will suck it dry in very short order. I have a 25lb tank which holds 6.76 gal, a conventional 20# tank holds 4.6 gal. To heat our teardrop I have an Espar diesel heater that uses very little electricity and not a lot of fuel.

I will be doing something similar when I start experimenting with my HYDRONIC Heat mod for my OFF_ROAD POPUP setup that will use the hot water heater for heat source replacing the propane furnace..

I want to be able to run my hot water heater from my on-board INVERTER for a PLAN B backup when PROPANE may not be available...

I will probably go with a smaller wattage 120VAC heater element however...

Roy Ken