Normal Life of a Water Heater
Most families use a water heater almost every day of their life, expecting the unit to perform reliably and produce that wonderful hot water shower, or bath, or sanitizing of the dishes daily. However, when a water heater does fail, and they do fail, people quickly realize how reliant they are on its function. Thus it does provide some very important planning to anticipate when a water heater will reach its life cycle maturity and become a risk for function failure. Does this Spark an idea?
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Life Expectancy
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Depending on the model and its functional parts, and also how it was installed, an average home water heater will last somewhere between 10 and 13 function years. This assumes almost daily use, all seasons of the year.
Construction Factors
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Some differences in life expectancy have to do with the construction of the given water heater being used. A typical design involves a steel tank that is surfaced with porcelain or some kind of ceramic. Eventually the metal will rust due to oxidation and corrosion. When the corrosion is extensive enough, the tank will leak, which eventually leads to catastrophic failure. Typical complete failure is the water heater emptying out onto the floor of the room it is in. Some of the oxidation can be delayed by adding an additional anodizing rod, which corrodes in sacrifice to save the tank from rusting. However, most tanks only come with one rod as standard.
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Outlier Results
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Do all heaters fail at year 13? Of course not; in fact, most people can probably think of someone who had a water heater last anywhere 15 to 20 years. But failure really has two definitions: complete functional failure and performance failure. Function failure, as discussed above, means the heater is kaput. Performance failure can occur when the heater still works but it either gets very expensive to run since it heats inefficiently, or the duration of hot water gets shorter and shorter as the old heater loses capacity to warm the water well. A typical sign of a performance problem is when the hot water goes cold after only 5 minutes.
Maintenance Affects Life Expectancy
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The number one problem affecting water heaters, aside from corrosion, is sediment. This comes in with the water in-flow and settles at the bottom of the tank. Over time the sediment can start to block inlets and outlets similar to clogging of a body's arteries. When the pipes get clogged, the water heater loses ability to do its job. Cleaning out the sediment regularly can reduce this effect.
Size Match to a House
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Another lesser known issue with performance and reliability over time is the size of the water heater versus the house it serves. If a water heater is smaller than what is recommended for a house size, the increased frequency and rate of heating will essentially burn up the tank parts faster due to too much demand. If the heater is too big in relation to the house, it will be carrying a burden to keep more water heated than is used by the house regularly. This too creates more work which costs more on the utility bills.
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References
Resources
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