How to Clean Out a Gas Hot Water Heater

Video Transcript

"Every water heater is equipped with a drain valve. There might come a time and place where you might have to drain your hot water heater. Some of these gas hot water heaters or electric, depending on your cities water or your countries water is going go develop a build up from heating your hot water heater, getting sediment inside your tank. Where you may want to drain it to make sure you clean out the insides, make sure they are working properly. Like I said every water heater is equipped with a drain valve. What I like to do is, of course, I don't have a hose handy with me right now, but you're going want to hook a hose to your drain valve, run it to your closest floor drain, because you've got forty gallons of water here that you want to drain out. So connect your hose to your drain valve, run it to your nearest floor drain, and you're going to want to open your drain valve. Drain valves, most likely, it's not set up like your regular outside hose valve, you have to use a screwdriver to open it. Once you do open it, you are going to want to drain every bit of water. But before hand, since this is a gas hot water heater you do not want to be heating your water while you are draining it, or else you can ruin your internal parts. So make sure you go to your gas valve, you're going to turn it to the off position, make sure it is off. And then, find your gas valve, every hot water heater should be equipped with a gas valve. Make sure you shut your gas valve down. And then you want to shut off your cold water supply, then proceed with your draining. Take a screwdriver, you're going to want to open up your drain valve, and drain every bit of hot water you've got. Drain all forty gallons or fifty gallons or thirty gallons, depending on the hot water heater you do have. Drain every bit of it down, and what I prefer to do is once it's totally empty, open your cold water supply back up and give it the chance to rinse the system out. Rinse every bit of sediments out of it, and if you get to the point where it's a slow drain, which sediment builds up and get stuck inside of your drain valve. Take a nice thin screwdriver or something, stick it up inside there, clean out the debris, let it continue draining. Keep rinsing, keep draining, and when you are finished with all of this, when you feel that you've got a nice clean supply of water coming back out of it, shut your drain valve off, open your supply valve fill your hot water heater back up, turn your gas back on, go to your gas valve, turn it back to the pilot position. Relay your hot water heater, run it, it should be good as gold."