So I noticed my water heater is 6 years old. I remember the days when these things were built to last 20/25+ years.

I have not done any maintenance on it at al.

How long do these modern ones last these days? Lifespan +\-?


What do you guys do if anything to keep them up?

Keeping methheads away from them adds 5-10 years to their useful life I hear.

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I like thinking big. . . If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.
-Donald J. Trump, BPE

10-15 years. Many of the problems with them can be due to hard water. Make sure the pipe connecters are free from corrosive materials and clean that area often.

Just replaced mine this fall. It was working fine but we had money set aside for repairs like this and I didn't want to roll the dice on it
much longer. I believe it was 13 or 14 years old so it was starting to push the envelope. Got a larger tank in the swap.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Replace the annodes every year and it'll last a very long time

But nobody does that

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

What Bob said. Keep the connectors clean. Also, you can flush out the tank with a hose into a sump pit once a year as well. That gets a lot of the sediment out of the bottom of it that can cause the tank to rust.

But other than that, just hope it lasts 10 years.

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GO Tankless???

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I am tankless and I have my yearly October vinegar cleaning weekend where I put on the Bears game and clean those boxes. Amazing what comes out of there.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

You know the water heater is getting old when you read the Energy Smart tag on it that says it's $5 a month to run the thing.

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

The sediment doesn’t cause rust...it is rust. Believe it or not Ike is right...and as he said, nobody replaces the anode. Thus replacing the tank is inevitable.

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Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.- JD Vance
If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn’t be pardoned.- JD Vance on the J-6 insurrectionists

Are you wanting a hot water heater or cold water heater?

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-- source