Hot water heater full of debris

the hot water is taken from the top of the tank,so the debris should not cause any problem for the pump.
however,a good share of us drain and flush the water heaters once a year or so to clean out the debris left by the erosion of the anode and the mineral deposits left behind by the different water supplies that we hook up to.
I believe that the replacement point for the anode is when it is about 3/4 gone.

debris would never make it to the pump, since cold fresh is pumped into the water heater, hot water is not pumped out. i guess you might have some sort of hydronic floor / baseboard heating system, maybe?

my tank flushed out a lot of scale, it's not all metal from the anode, only some anode metal bonds to the other lighter metals in the water itself that would otherwise damage the tank

I haven't needed a vacuum, but I guess I never probed around in there with a camera or anything. six gallons of fresh rushing out the anode plug carried out all my debris.

With drain plug out OPEN Water supply and stand back........let the cold inlet that comes in at bottom of tank blow the tank (junk/debris/crud) out under force.

And as others have stated....pump sucks from fresh water tank only.......it then discharges under 45# pressure (or higher) into cold water lines off of which is the inlet to tank. HOT water comes out top of tank.
SO if any debris should get carried out of WH tank you will get plugging of faucet aerators and possibly shower.



Anode Rod

No NEED to replace until 75% Gone.

Old-Biscuit wrote:
With drain plug out OPEN Water supply and stand back........let the cold inlet that comes in at bottom of tank blow the tank (junk/debris/crud) out under force.

And as others have stated....pump sucks from fresh water tank only.......it then discharges under 45# pressure (or higher) into cold water lines off of which is the inlet to tank. HOT water comes out top of tank.
SO if any debris should get carried out of WH tank you will get plugging of faucet aerators and possibly shower.



Anode Rod

No NEED to replace until 75% Gone.

Thanks for this, Biscuit. I've never known how these things work.

Lyle

they make a gizmo you put on a garden hose to flush out the tanks. get one, use it.

I used a piece of heater hose and stick one end into the hose of my shop vac and stick the other end in through the anode hole. It does a good job of getting all the junk out.

easy way to flush a water heater is to remove the drain plug (Atwood) or anode rod (Suburban) and plug in the hose to city water, let the water pour. If it is cold or in a place you want to stay dry (or simply want to conserve water). You may place a blow out plug in the city water connection, and let air pour thru the system. Either way, as long as the plug is removed from the water heater, it will clean the heater tank pretty well.

When I winterize after draining and isolating the tank I insert a rod with holes and a shut off valve to disperse the water in radial directions and connect this to a potable water supply then insert this through the tank drain. The pulsating of the water directed into the vairous parts of the tank reallys flushes a lot of crud out of the tank.

Jim