Replaced my water heater myself YAY!
 

...in the attic of the 2nd floor of my house!

Job went pretty smoothly, but I owe my next door neighbor big time. That was a PITA to get the old one down the access ladder, and the new (and bigger) one back up. Although he basically guided it up the ladder while i did a 130+lb shoulder press to push it up to him.

had to cut the cold and hot CPVC and splice in about 10" on the risers and put in a link to extend the pressure relief drain pipe to accommodate the taller height of the new heater, but all that went well. no leaks so far.

I've never done brazing before, so i was looking forward to giving that a try (the pressure relief pipe was hard soldered in) but they've got these cool ass "Shark Bite" fittings now that are awesome. and specifically designed to be used w/water heater fittings. you basically just clean up the ends of your cuts, and these fittings are attached to braided flex hoses in different lengths, and they litterally just press on to the cut end of your pipe. so that saved me a ton of time. because again, the new height of the heater changed the geometry of the old pipe and added about 10 or so inches to the length. flex hose was perfect.

All in all, a project that went well and saved me close to a grand.

Congrats - always a good feeling to finish a project like that with no surprises.

Just a warning on the sharkbite fittings - I'm sure they will be fine on a non-constant-pressure relief or overflow line, but I tried to use them when I replaced my water softener a while back. I was wiggling the pipes a bit to see if I felt like they would hold, and one of them blew off and soaked about 1/4 of my garage before I could get it shut off. Not confident enough in my pipe sweating skills to risk flooding my house, I paid a plumber to do that part.

Thanks trace, had it not been the overflow line, I might have gone a different way. I pushed them on and gave them a pretty hard tug and they didn't budge though.

Glad you got it done Rob..


I'm almost 99% sure that "Shark Bites" won't pass an inspection so if you go to sell your house - it may come up as something that needs to be changed out.. With that being said - I used them on about 4 or 5 places in my bathroom remodel and they are dry as a bone 3 years later..

Congrats!

Woke up Sunday morning to a leaky water heater in my basement too. Got on craigslist, found a guy selling new used 50 gal heaters for $150 from a depelopment gone bankrupt. Picked up some copper and elbows from Lowes. Had hot water by noon. Probably not the prettiest solders, but they are water tight. I have a love/hate relationship with house projects.

Oh yea, and I had a house showing that afternoon, thus the urgency.

Sweating pipe is super easy guys! Just need to know the couple tricks to doing it!

Clean and dry! Make suer the pipe and fittings are clean, shiny not dull, and dry no moisture. Sometimes when soldering onto an exsisting pipe you can't get it completely dry so a little trick is to shove some bread in there to keep the water back while you solder. Then when you turn the water back on it'll push the bread right out the spigot or facet just make sure to remove the screen on faucets if they have them.

When heating the pipe to solder don't put the flame on the solder or the joint instead put it on the fitting. You want to get the fitting hot enough it draws the solder in. You'll find with a dry fitting it doesn't take to long to heat it up. If there's water in the pipe you'll never get it hot enough and you'll just be boiling water in the line.

You guys should try soldering your next projects its really easy once you get the hang of it!

Congrats on working out your own problems and replacing your water heaters. I'm glad i didn't have to replace that one in the attic sounds like a pain getting it up. As a side note. Did you put a drain pan underneath it or did you reuse and old one? You wouldn't want any leaks to soak your ceilings!

Thanks for the soldering advice. I had only done 1 fitting myself a few years ago for a dishwasher, so I got to increase my experience 10 fold, haha. Everything went smoothly except for a drippy hot side, could not figure out how to keep it dry, thus the mess. It is definitely fun to do when the fitting sucks up the solder properly.