Secrets Inside Your Water Heater. Teardown And Repurpose. FarmCraft101
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- Опубликовано: 7 мар 2019
- The inner workings of a water heater are more interesting than you think. And there are many uses for a broken heater. What can we turn this thing into?
Water heater series:
Part 1- • Secrets Inside Your Wa...
Part 2 - • Making a Chicken Scald...
Part 3 - • Making a Foundry Furna...
Part 4 - • Making a Foundry Furna...
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"I think I am going to save these, they still work"
Lol, I am the same
That red button is not a breaker, but TCO (Thermal Cut Off). It trips when the water heater is over heating. It will not trip on a short or over current.
I been subscribed to u for a few months and I just gotta say I have learned so much from watching your channel. I love the way u take time to explain how things work and your reasoning for why u are doing what your doing. Thanks and keep the videos coming
Wow!
I learned more in an hour about melting furnaces and water heaters.
Thanks dude.
FarmCraft101, the glass on the inside is just enameled glass. I work for AO Smith, aka American Water Heater making both electric(mostly my side) and gas heaters. It's rather interesting to do honestly.
Im sorry for your pain I worked there too.
@AaronManning
So is it a powder coat process or liquid application? Just curious thanks!
I’ve always wanted to cut one of those apart now I don’t have to 🤠👍 good video 🐔
I’ve been told the porcelain/glass liner is susceptible to hairline cracks when set on it’s side. DIYers often make the mistake of laying them down in the pickup bed for the trip home, greatly reducing it life.
crap, is this true? our handyman plumber delivered ours laying down in the back of his pickup truck.
If you lived in PA the bottom 1/3 would have been filled with hard mineral deposits, very hard water here. When I lived in Newville, PA we had to clean out the water heater one to two times a year because the minerals would build up over the bottom heating element. Would have to remove the heating element and chisel away the minerals the best we could and flush it out.
@Fuzzy Tech - Same here in Southern California for those getting water from the Colorado River. Very high level of dissolved minerals. Very hard on water heaters.
Here in the PNW, no “hard” water. My Rheem electric water heater is 26 years and still going strong.
Back in the day, I helped a friends Dad demo an old house. It was a huge old 2 story affair, with a stone foundation that had 4 foot thick walls and a big basement. The water heater stood over 6 feet high and was connected to the wood/coal furnace by a thick walled 1 inch dia coil of copper pipe. When the added thermal blanket was stripped off the tank, we found that it was solid brass! That tank was over 100 years old and still functioning. I wish that I could have that today! Went to the scrapper. Shame.
@Rain Coast did the seams have rivets and some type of pitch? We replaced and old food service stainless steel tank with rivets. Had to be at least 45 years old at the time.
I'll bet somebody got a nice big rock of crank.
Gentrify USA. Soon there will be no microwave oven transformers, no aluminum or iron scrap to make anything out of.
No washing machine motors, no hot water heaters to repurpose because theives, tweakers, recyclers and landlords have scowerer the land and everything will be nice and pretty and gentrified and sterile.
And all of us old school makers will have to pay top dollar for materials and forget about repurposing a dishwasher into a sandblaster.
@@maynardjohnson3313 Iron scrap is barely worth hauling. In fact, I have worked at a place where we had a dead old dozer kinda in the way, but it would have cost more to cut it up and haul it than the metal was worth.
That means we will likely always have heaps of scrap steel. If there was ever a 'shortage', we would already have the 'deposits' to fill that shortage.
Alu and other fancy metals are a bit different.
As a couple others have mentioned, having a full stainless tank would not eliminate the corrosion issue. It would definitely help, especially when paired with a good liner, but the corrosion will still occur due to galvanic action between the multiple metal types in your plumbing
Great tear down showing electric elements. I was replacing the rod and still had too much water. It pooled on top electric cable area. I was concerned on what other damage would be possible. From looks of things. Everything was very basic with only 3 points of concern. Once I'll dry it out, I'll be comfortable to turn it on.
Noticed a neighbour has one likely waiting for disposal. I was wondering if leaving all the exterior shell on, using a metal cutting blade in a reciprocating saw, if a person could just cut the top off, maybe seal the open top edge of the side layers, to use as a (opentop) water-holding tank (rainbarrel?) !
Water heaters are the best example of planned obsolescence. I remember so many old water heaters that would last for 20+ years.
I needed a tank for my shallow well pump (gray water) that I used for irrigation and salvaged a discarded hot water heater from the side of the road (thanks neighbor) I found the holes and welded them shut and Bob's your Uncle I had my tank. That was about 20 years ago and it still works. Great video thumbs up.
I have a HWT that I saved to do something creative with. I was VERY glad for your not just skipping the less effective methods. Many would cut that out but it really helped me assess what I can do with it. Thanks for making the video!
Notice, there is no anode left in your tank.
If you replace the anode every few years, it will last a lot longer.
Nice video! Thanks for sharing. Great idea for the chicken scalded.
Thank you for sharing this, I'm on my 3rd water heater in my mobile home, mainly because the first two were used, but still this clears up my wonder about water heaters! 😀
Thanks for the reveal. I always wondered what the inside looks like.
The water heaters here in the UK are made out of copper get a pretty Penny for them when you sell them at the scrapyard we have to be careful with some older ones that have asbestos wrapped around them amazing video and enjoy the day
Same here too in Australia. I check the manufacturer date if it’s after the asbestos ban date I’m grabbing it
@@TheLexiconDevils totally agree with you check the date refresh yourself on asbestos awareness just look it up so you know all kinds asbestos colours and where they would be in older houses you can't go wrong with a copper water heater nice bit of copper👍
Thanks brother! Great vid! It’s a good inspiration to make my own water heater from scratch out of stainless or copper.
Thanks for the detail.
4 videos in a minute? Todays a good day
Very informative, thanks.
Awesome video 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻Thanks for sharing 💥💥💥
Thanks bro. Kind of in a life or death situation and this might actually save my life.
Yeah Sale are everything. You are right then they wouldn't sell water heaters. Yahtzee Interesting video, wondered what it looks like in side. Thanks John
Jim/England. All the video's have so much interesting information! Great viewing keep it coming. 😀
Informative, thanks!
Wow 🤩
You opened my eyes🙏🙏🙏
Excellent presentation 👍
If you ever need to get stuff detached from foam, use nail polish remover, acetone, or MEK. Any of those should dissolve some of the foam, enough to get you an edge at least.
I recently dismantled a commercial grade stainless steel ice chest and that foam seriously kicked my azz and made the task much more of a pain.
We have a stainless steel one. 80+ years old, no problems yet.
Yeah they used to build things to last, now they purposely build them to break for repeat business. Sad
@@MikeyJ686 Same with cars. Now they use more fiberglass, which breaks instead of denting, and doesn't seem like it would protect you as much as steel.
Radster Chernobyl actually, today’s cars seems to break in thousands of pieces when there’s a collision, instead of staying in one piece like the old ones, BUT nowadays the fiberglass parts dissipate a lot of energy from the crash just breaking, instead of transmitting all of it to you and causing severe damage to your body, so be glad that the car manufacturers pay that much attention to security.
@@marioghioneto1275 Oh not that 'crumple zone' propaganda. We have airbags and seat-belts for absorbing impact. I don't want my vehicle to shatter to bits for a problem that's already been solved. It's just an excuse for them to put cheaper parts on cars that break easier. Ontop of that, the car could completely shatter away, and allow the other thing involved in the impact to go all the way through. Metal won't do that. Fuck fiberglass!
Literally just came from a video where a guy scrapped out three water heaters that all had copper tanks. I'd never seen a copper tank water heater until that video. They were big too- like 80 gallon.
Thanks for this video, this help me a lot to understand how it works an electric heater. And is simple. Not difficult. Thanks for share you skills.
Wow. This was super-informative. Thanks for going through the trouble. It's cool to see one of these beasts without its clothes on. It's not so mysterious once you strip away all of the coverings.
Crazy to think how much of reliable operation depends on the little things, like a relay. It's a wonder that these things last as long as they do. I guess the parts only need to last for as long as it takes a weld to rust out.
YOU ROCK! Excellent video with great s traightforward explanations and demos.
My understanding is that the upper element is the "Demand" element that turns on when you run the water. The bottom element would be the convective element that maintains temperature when no demand is placed on the WH, at least that's my understanding.
i've fitted some so that the top element is used during the day, but at night with cheap tariff electricity the whole tank gets heated, also with dual indirect coils we connect several different sources eg solid fuel and solar. see a dunsley neutraliser 'image search' set up for a decent example, and don't get my started on low content high recovery systems lol.
We used a crawfish pot and propane burner. The wind guard was the outside of an old water heater. The burner also came from the same hw heater. We boil a lot of crawfish in Louisiana so I and others usually have multiples laying about. Chickens have to be chased down in Mamou, Louisiana for their Mardi Gras celebration. Part of the festivities. Bunch of crazy Frenchmen chasing chickens. You can bust a gut laughing. Great video. HAPPY MARDI GRAS.
Awesome info tnk u
@8:22: Re: other concerns: surge at shut-off.
Electrical systems experience something similar to water hammer. Suddenly shutting off that much current could damage other appliances on that circuit and even on other circuits. It's why you should surge-protect sensitive appliances even if you have surge protection at the panel. (I.e., not all surges originate upstream of the panel.)
Hi there, when I was a kid I remember my father replacing a copper lined gas hot water service ( Im now 60) , the last house we had I replaced the hot water service and I put in a stainless hot water service there , a company in Australia makes them.
Nice! For the first time,,,Im scrapping out one for the Tank.,Just! what I needed to see.
Awesome video. I just came across 8 old gas water heaters and was searching for ways to re-purpose them. I want to build a solar water heater.
You are a stubborn stuborn man sir...Well done!
Hey thanks always wondered what inside and how the cold inlet worked. Want to do one for a passive tank, strip down and paint black
I'm going to try to get the old water heater out of my attic and make a scalder out of it. It's propane, I think it might be better than having 240V around water. Thanks for the inspiration!
We have copper hot water tanks in the UK. Unfortunately they don't last either. They corrode over time and fail around the pipe fittings. Galvanic corrosion. Mine lasted about 20 years.
12:55 It's just enameled steel, it has been in commercial use since 1850.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_porcelain_enamel
Thanks I recently bought an all electric house and have never had an electric water heater before. The previous owner had the thermostat set to the highest temperature so I took off the top cover and turned it down. I had no idea there was a second thermostat. I paused the video and immediately set the bottom thermostat. Thanks
Btw the comment below mine was written by a Johnson.
seems like an easy enough thing to make yourself, a welder or oxy torch for either stainless or copper respectively, remake the tank, install all the fittings and valves, insulate infinitely better than it came from the factory and bam, generations-lasting water heater
The Bottom element is called the quick recovery element.
It will begin heating the cold water before you use it all.
Under heavy usage the upper element will turn on.
This and the potential of sediment being trapped at the bottom of the tank
is why the bottom element generally goes out first.
The cold water entering the bottom lifts the hot up and out the hot water jacket.
Without this design the water in the bottom of the tank would become stagnant.
Thank you
In Norway about every water heater tanks are made of stainless steel since the around the eighties, I think :)
Hello from Canada
In the food prep industry the do use stainless steel tanks, lol but they still have an Achilles's heel! Tank weld connections.
Nice!
Love your videos, perfect editing and precise use of fast forwarding.
Maybe someone commented here, but if it's glass lined, then they likely do it the same way as firing ceramics. If you make pottery, you have to seal it to use it. So they paint on powdered glass (can't recall what the name is). Its a slurry mixed with minerals that provide colour. Fire it and poof, a tough glass like protective layer.
@Blair Cox that's why you should never install a new heater that has been dented. But I've seen it done. Some people just to save a buck, huh!
This is a fascinating video! Could you weld the hole? Just a thought.
Stainless fatigue cracks, pressure cycling would cause failure pretty quickly. I work in a pulp mill, and we only line some pressure vessels with stainless.
Some digesters are made of titanium though.
Dream big, even for water heaters.
Old water heaters were copper. I love finding them in scrap 😎
Copper and stainless do corrode, and higher temps = faster corrosion. Those green stains in your old sink bowls are the insides of old copper pipes. A full composite tank might last forever.
How's the Kobalt air compressor working for ya? Thinking about getting one
Angle grinder with 4 inch cut off wheel will save you time, energy and sanity.
I was quite surprised when you initially mentioned a sacrificial anode... I thought "Eh? It's not steel is it?"...
I found that really weird, here in the UK I've only ever seen them made of copper.
Are you sure it was copper? Am pretty sure in order to work as a sacrifice they are all made out of magnesium.
@@freddifish4179 sorry, I mean our entire water tank is made of copper.
After buying my house my hot water tank started to leek so I changed it from a steel tank to a stainless steel tank, here in the UK we have to have 3 forms of redundancy for pressure release + the vent has to go to the outside + an expansion tank. We call these tanks unvented, I know the US have been using these for decades but normally in the UK we just have a tank where the pressure can't build at all because it isn't contained at all just insulated.
In the UK hot water tanks are made of copper but they still fail. They last 25 - 35 years.
Used to be in Australia too. Last few years I’ve found a lot as they fail in houses built in the 80’s
No, it wouldnt cause more pressure with 2 elements heating, as there is no check valve on the cold water in.
Maybe try a bass guitar string next time to separate the foam after you cut the outer skin. 3:21
Another useful purpose for an old hot water heater is to use it as an extra air accumulator. I have an 80 gallon accumulator that the 7hp dual stage air pump is connected to. I have two old 50 gallon water heaters to be hold a total of 180 gallons of air. I built myself a small shed outside my shop for these extra tanks in case of explosion. That much air instantly escaping would blow out all of the windows and all 3 doors. It would also terminate your hearing and vision if you happened to be in the shop if it blew out in there @ 175 psi. That really keeps your pump from running constantly when painting or sand blasting.
uhh, you got big balls using rusty non-pressure-rated tanks for 175 psi air, even if they are in a shed
@@virtualtools_3021 big rusty balls at that
Leak/pressure testing with air! Phew. Not for the faint-hearted
Agree I was cringing! After seeing an air compressor explode just after startup from a pinhole in tank and knowing there wasn't much pressure at all in it yet I quickly learned best to test with H²O and very little pressure!
Thank you for not calling it a "hot" water heater.
Subbed nice work
Our hot water heater is still working after 50+ years!
our electric water heater is leaking too, thanks for the video :) we should get a stanless steel or a cooper one :)
Once you removed the sheet metal on the outside was it super hard to remove the foam?? I have 2 water heaters to scrap for different projects.
In the uk they are all copper or stainless now cos it’s cheaper
Living in Germany, I always find it interesting how limited electric appliances are in the US compared to Germany (and in fact most of Western Europe) due to the grid supply. With three phase current at 240/400V available almost everywhere, electric water heating is nowadays almost always done through tankless water heaters, as with 20 to 30kW of power you can easily get decent flow rates out of them. Boilers are mostly only used for non-electric water heating (oil, gas or wood pellet burners, solar). Tankless systems avoid the inevitable losses of a hot water tank (insulation can only do so much), as hot water is only produced when it is used, not sitting around at temperature for hours on end, plus you don't need the space for the tank.
@@user-hu6pk3zs3i In Germany, a tank is more expensive. Electricity isn't cheaper at night around here, at least not anymore.
@@blahfasel2000 It's cheaper everywhere, at least it should be, because the price is a result of supply and demand.
Night time demand is way lower, but at the same time power plants cannot reduce their output (cause of inherent quirks of the power grid), ergo they sell the electricity at like half the cost or whatever it was.
There are even businesses built around this that pump water high up in artificial lakes, when the electricity is cheaper, to then let the water come down cause of gravity through turbines to make electricity and sell it at a marked up price.
@@user-hu6pk3zs3i Yes, I know all that, that doesn't change anything about the fact that night time tariffs for consumers have been phased out in Germany more than a decade ago.
Also, with more than 42GW of installed solar capacity basically capable of handling the daytime peak on its own at least on a halfway decent sunny day, nowadays quite often spot market prices for electricity in Germany are actually the same or even lower during the day than they are at night. Combined with more than 55GW of wind power, it means that the prices are more dependent on weather than they are on the time of day.
@@blahfasel2000 Bullshit.
www.energy-charts.de/price.htm
Also wind and solar is just propaganda for eco retards to eat up.
I work construction here in the USA and every new home I’ve worked on is using tankless water heaters now.
The exhaust gasses coming up through the center help heat the top
8:40 The heated water expanding and "...doesn't have anywhere to go..." If you're on municipal water, it expands back towards the water main. If you're on a well, it expands back towards your well pump pressure tank. If anyone has a check valve in the feed to a hot water tank, well - please don't.
Many town city water supplys require a back flow check at the meter. You need an expansion tank for the water expansion.
Can’t believe there was no more scale in the bottom of the tank. I’ve changed dozens of bottom elements and usually end up with a gallon of lime debris. If you put a piece of heater hose on your shop vac you can vacuum the scale out. Bottom elements will short out when the scale builds up around the element. Our water heaters usually start leaking just after the five year warranty.
There’s an anode rod that prevents corrosion. Yours probably was eaten away causing your tank to fail.
He mentioned at the beginning that he had already removed it.
Get a Marathon made out of fiberglass. Failed to mention that red dot on the thermostat. That is the over temp switch that opens if the other thermostat contacts weld together. Must be manually reset. I got a working water heater from a neighbor for solar experiments. You must not have hard water. I had to empty out a 5 gal bucket of scale from it. High density water heater elements boil water on the surface and then that flakes off to the bottom clogging the tank. More expensive longer elements are low density and do not heat up as high for the same wattage. Consider these in high scale areas.
Pro tip: Use a torch on sheet metal to melt the foam that's holding it.
You or someone else downwind would want to be careful of the toxic gases from the burning/melting foam !?
They should make those things out of aluminum and not carbon steel. If they did this then Jethro's crazy tinker toy pattern with the PVC blocking the way out of the closet space wouldn't be too much of a pain pulling it out over top of the PVC rat nest.
The reason we run #10 to a residential heater is because the wire is sized for the heater being continuous duty. 4500/240= 18.75×1.25 (125%)= 23.44 > 30a breaker #10 wire.
I think stainless would have stress corrosion problems. you have got chlorides in there, as well as temperature and pressure. Im kinda guessing not an expert on heaters, hopefully I'll be in a few years (getting my degree in chemical engineering). Aniway love these videos man, congrats from italy
Im only half way through at this point...but is there anything you could make out of this tank? Ive seen ppl make wood burners out of empty gas bottles and was hoping i vould make something useful like that out of my empty water tank. Theu are quite valuable as scrap right now so i know i can scrap it but first i thought id see if there was anything i could make from it.
my fam runs a plumbing and heating biz i have seen these 2 elements get stuck on and the release valve not work from rust and calcium build up once it blew the hole back side of the house off and the other one went through 2 floors and the roof and landed on a car 3 blooks away. most of the time it just make a hell of a mess but if that valve dont work it makes a bomb. and the leak is always on the bottom
Nice explanation! I actually modded my 40 gallon electric water heater so both elements can run at the same time, which made a huge difference in performance when the demand for hot water is high. I simply installed a 2nd circuit for the water heater and put the bottom element on its own circuit so it can run whenever the thermostat turns it on, even if the top element is running at the same time. But even though the performance was completely adequate after just that one mod, I went one step further and replaced both 4500 watt elements with 5500 watt elements. I replaced the water heater's internal wiring with 10 gauge just to be safe too. Now the water heater is pretty much impossible to run out of hot water when showering. And if the water does start to get cool, a decent amount of warm water is available within about 10 minutes.
As for safety concerns, I don't see any as long as this mod is done properly. However, if you choose to upgrade your elements to more powerful ones like I did, make sure that the thermostats and internal wiring are rated for the increased power draw. My water heater's thermostats are rated for 30 amps, so I was able to use the factory thermostats. However, the internal wiring was 14 gauge, so I replaced all the internal wiring with 10 gauge just to be safe.
Are you still alive that seems sketchy as hell
@@lorenzo6045 Yup, still alive and the water heater is still doing great. What do you think seems so sketchy about what I did?
@@averyalexander2303 Good to hear. I would've imagined there would be an increased pressure from all that extra heating.
@@lorenzo6045 Water expands by a fixed amount for any given temperature rise. Heating the 40 gallon tank of water from, for example, 70 degrees to 120 degrees will result in the same ~1.4 gallon increase in volume regardless of how quickly or slowly it's heated. The only reason residential water heaters only run 1 element at a time is to reduce the peak power consumption by half so smaller wiring can be used. To run one 4500W or 5500W element, a single 30 amp circuit with 10 gauge wire is needed to handle the continuous 18-23 amps. Running two 4500W or 5500W elements at the same time would require two 30 amp circuits or one 60 amp circuit fed by a minimum of 6 gauge wire, which would add a significant expense. Since a water heater is considered a continuous load, it is only allowed to use 80% of the circuit's rated amperage.
@@averyalexander2303 thank you that makes sense
I would really like to see you make a chicken plucker. I raise quail and have been thinking about making my own small plucker. Presently I use a drill with rubber fingers on an aluminum tube. I Enjoy your videos.
I don't think 37.5 A would cause "rapid expansion". The reason one element at a time is, as you said, to keep the current demand down and the wire gauge down. The water does have somewhere to go when it expands, it simply pushes back out the supply. The relief should never "relieve" unless there is something wrong, or possibly, when the home owner shuts off the supply at a time that the heater is heating.
Agree. Not likely to be a problem.
Try Acetone on the foam.
Should be pretty obvious what the difference between a 6 year and a 12 year warranty tank is by the video... The label on the water heater and the $$$. It's a numbers game by the manufacturers, with the most important number being how many are actually going to file a claim an a water heater unless it's only a year old... Just buy that 6 year tank and maintain it EVERY YEAR! Pull and check the anode rod, flush the tank, and you will get a lifetime of service from that unit.
Any idea what gauge the wall of the pressure vessel was? Do you think it could be used to make a barbecue smoker?
looks to be at least 1/8, should be overkill if anything
Excel America sells a compact, copper-core hot water heater, $200. Low flow version has a magnetic flow switch. Runs on LP gas and 2 x D batteries.
Based on your tear down, do you feel you could lift these from the inlet/out pipe threads? I couldn’t really see how they are mounted internally but I have seen so many people do this now it just makes me nervous. That said, I’m desperate to one man this into my attic somehow
They do make them out of stainless steel but it adds to the cost and people are cheap. The commercial water heaters are more likely to be stainless steel.
Maybe make a homemade water heater from copper for a future project?
I just noticed that there's no drain on the lower end of your tank or was there one ??Yep there was one but its wiered that you can't see it as it is below the lower element...
I heard there are some dewalt labelled tools that aren’t dewalt. Heard that on a tool review at crappy tire.