At Home In The Woods

[PAGUY]

Obed - You want two ball type shut off valves on the gas water heater so that you can shut off both the intake and outflow sides of the heater. I recently had my gas water heater replaced and the plumber has a new copper tubing connector that works by crimping the copper tubing ends together. No need to use solder and propane tank to make connections. Good idea about a pan under heater and remember to schedule maintenance of the unit such as flushing sediment from the bottom of the tank otherwise the proficiency will suffer over time. Then also you should clean burner as again dirt will collect around portals where gas ignites.

Not mentioned yet but when the washer gets installed two ball valves are a good idea on the water lines so that they can be turned off when washer is not in use. Hoses even the flexcovered kind will rupture sometime in the future. Makes one heck of a mess if not home at the time. "An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure."

 

[dex3361]

Concerning the hot water tank. If you have a lot of minerals in your water you may get sediment in your tank. The hose spigot valve is prone to clog so before I install a tank I swap out a 3/4 brass ball valve. That way if it clogs you can rod it out without making a huge mess.

 

[shane]

Concerning the hot water tank. If you have a lot of minerals in your water you may get sediment in your tank. The hose spigot valve is prone to clog so before I install a tank I swap out a 3/4 brass ball valve. That way if it clogs you can rod it out without making a huge mess.

Wish someone had shared that little jewel of advice with me when I built.

 

[rjkobbeman]

Wish someone had shared that little jewel of advice with me when I built.

You can easily add this at any time... you just have to drain the tank. Not a real big deal.

I have a ball valve and then the traditional spigot after that. That way I can still connect a hose if need be. The spigot can uncrew off of the ball valve if need be.

 

[MoKelly]

Concerning the hot water tank. If you have a lot of minerals in your water you may get sediment in your tank. The hose spigot valve is prone to clog so before I install a tank I swap out a 3/4 brass ball valve. That way if it clogs you can rod it out without making a huge mess.

I was told that unsoftened water will prematurely ruin a hot water heater. So, I got a softener.

MoKelly

 

[rjkobbeman]

I was told that unsoftened water will prematurely ruin a hot water heater. So, I got a softener.

MoKelly

I have read that if you are religous about checking and replacing the anode rod in your tank it will last a LONG time. I don't know if hard and/or soft water accelerates the corrosion of the anode rod. As far as I have read, as long as the anode rod has life left in it, the tank will not corrode... the anode rod is sacrificed.

I have read -- but I don't know if it is true or not -- that soft water can accelerate the corrosion process due to salt? I'm not sure. The water softener folks tell me the salt is contained in the softener, however I have read differently on the web. I really don't know the correct answer.

I have two tanks: one a preheat passive tank that my GEO warms up and a second one that is connected in series. The second tank is an active NG water heater. I check my anode rods once every couple of years. It is pretty easy to do. My tanks AND rods are only two years old so they are still OK. I have a water softener also.

 

[brin]

Obed,
A previous poster mentioned installing a water filtration system on your water lines coming to the house from the well.

I highly sugest you do this. Our house on our farm we did not do it an we had to replace our refrigerator, washer and dryer way befoe their time and never knew why..it was back in the early 80's before filters were a big deal but in the toilet tanks I always saw the little metal chips..lots of them so 6 yrs. ago now when we built our new house and we have a well I installed a 2 filter system on our water line...so far after 6 yrs the toilet tanks have not metal chips , all appliances are just fine.

You can get these systems for less that $200.00 at the big box stores and as was mentioned get the clear ones where you can see how dark the filter is getting. When I clean mine, about every 6 months the first filter is almost black with lots of metal chips in the bottom , at least a cup full and the second one in line is not so bad and no metal chips. If we did not have those filters all of those chips would be going into our appliances and us..We have a drilled well with 15 gal per min. of water so it is not a dug well and neither was our last one..I am just saying.........

 

[charlz]

Note that if you put the hot water heater in a pan now, even if you can't drain it you can someday put a water sensor in the pan and tie it into your automation system so you get an alert if there are problems.

I was watching some home improvement show a few years ago and they installed a water alarm that goes to a cut-off switch on the cold water side. That way if you get water in the pan for some reason it cuts off the water supply. If your pan doesn't drain it will still make a bit of a mess but not as much.

 

[eepete]

There's an after market device called a Water Cop that can turn off water if there's a leak. That's good, but notification is also good. We have our washing machine in a pan so we can see if there's a leak. Some of this comes down to if you have a dripping leak or a major break/fast leak. Cut off good for fast leak, notification nice for all leaks.

I have the valves for the water cop in the house, just haven't tied them into the automation system yet. You can get water sensors from standard alarm supply houses.

Oh yeah, obed - get the water filter. Easy to put in.

Pete

 

[Obed]

Thanks all for the great comments regarding the hot water heater and the filters. We bought a sediment filter today.

We will put a pan under the hot water heater. We have a floor drain near the hot water heater. Unfortunately, the original construction manager did not tell the concrete guys to slope the floor toward the drain even though we told him to slope it and even though it was on the plans. Fortunately, my wife caught the problem before the concrete was poured around the second floor drain near the basement bathroom/laundry and got the floor sloped there. We may run a flexible water hose from the pan over to the drain in the utility room. The downside is the hose will have to snake about 4 feet across the walking space to reach the drain.

 

[Obed]

It's either for quick access to another roll of TP when the one on the roller has 2 sheets left after your wife didn't change it out or so it wouldn't hit the bathroom door! Looking good Obed.

Dishpointer,
You win the quiz. The door is hinged to give easy access to the extra TP rolls in the cabinet.

The door shown in the picture was not the bathroom door. We had several doors off the hinges sitting in the bathroom while the door trim was being painted. The cabinet doors should not interfere with the bathroom door.

Obed

 

[Obed]

The front porch step and posts got installed. We had the stone guy install the step. He suggested that we cap the top of the step with stone. We liked the idea and went with it.

 

[Obed]

We have two fixtures outside the garage, one at each corner by the driveway. One of them has a motion detector. We put cheap floodlights around the house figuring we will eventually replace them with home automation floodlights. It didn't occur to me that both of the garage floodlight fixtures are on the same switch. Only having a motion detector on one of the switches wouldn't work. If we turned on the light switch, the fixture with the motion detector would stay turned off unless activated by motion. However, the other fixture would stay on all the time.

In consequence, I re-wired the fixture with the motion detector so that it would control both fixtures. The gutter downspout blocks the motion detector a little but it still seems to work well enough. Now we can walk outside our camper and the garage floodlights will light up. Yay!

 

[dstig1]

Thanks all for the great comments regarding the hot water heater and the filters. We bought a sediment filter today.

We will put a pan under the hot water heater. We have a floor drain near the hot water heater. Unfortunately, the original construction manager did not tell the concrete guys to slope the floor toward the drain even though we told him to slope it and even though it was on the plans. Fortunately, my wife caught the problem before the concrete was poored around the second floor drain near the basement bathroom/laundry and got the floor sloped there. We may run a flexible water hose from the pan over to the drain in the utility room. The downside is the hose will have to snake about 4 feet across the walking space to reach the drain.

There's always a solution....You can build a deeper pan and put the drain a titch higher on the pan so it still has slope to the drain.

And what kind of concrete guy doesn't slope a slab to the drain? You don't need to be told that... I mean c'mon...

 

[Obed]

Here are pictures of the front porch with the new posts.

I was surprised at how much the posts changed the looks of the house. My wife got 8" square fiberglass posts. She didn't like the smaller posts as much. Now that I see how the bigger posts look, I'm glad we got the bigger ones.

 

[dstig1]

Obed, peel those stickers off the windows before it is too late. They will get more aggressive with time and you will never get them off without solvents...especially on the south and west sides

 

[Obed]

Obed, peel those stickers off the windows before it is too late. They will get more aggressive with time and you will never get them off without solvents...especially on the south and west sides

Good point. I guess there's no real reason to keep the stickers on the windows; it's not like we'll be returning them.
Obed

 

[doall]

You're just doing like the guys that drive around with the window stickers on their new car for a month, so everyone knows it a new car.:laughing: But they will get very hard to remove if left on.
You're house looks great.

 

[dcyrilc]

The house is looking beautiful.:thumbsup: Don't be suprised if you start seeing lots of company next year so that we can all see the real thing and not just pictures.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

 

[tommu56]

Thanks all for the great comments regarding the hot water heater and the filters. We bought a sediment filter today.

We will put a pan under the hot water heater. We have a floor drain near the hot water heater. Unfortunately, the original construction manager did not tell the concrete guys to slope the floor toward the drain even though we told him to slope it and even though it was on the plans. Fortunately, my wife caught the problem before the concrete was poured around the second floor drain near the basement bathroom/laundry and got the floor sloped there. We may run a flexible water hose from the pan over to the drain in the utility room. The downside is the hose will have to snake about 4 feet across the walking space to reach the drain.

Can you put the water heater up and pan on a couple of cement blocks then you would have some elevation to work the pan drain out of the way?

tom