Are you thinking of installing a tankless water heater in your home or RV and worrying about the maintenance? How often should you clean it? Need to flush it or not? When and how? No worries. This article got your back.
We usually consider water itself a clean substance. As a tankless water heater does not store water and does not reheat it time after time, so we assume that it needs less cleaning. The manufacturer of tankless water heaters although suggest cleaning it once annually. Even more, if your area contains hard water. It is to eliminate the constant build-up of calcium and other minerals within the units. Some modern manufactured tankless water heater’s units are modified to notice you when they need to be cleaned. And if all this information makes you dizzy, hold the ground because it would take you only about an hour to flush clean your tankless water heater.
What you need:
It is pretty easy to clean a tankless water heater and does not cost you much. But you need certain things near your hands.
- a screwdriver
- a bucket
- a lot of white vinegar (approximately 5 gallons)
- non-contact electrical tester
- pond pump or small sump pump
- adjustable wrench
- 6 feet long two sections garden hose (with connectors)
Precautions:
If your tankless water heater is a gas or electricity-driven one, then you should always make sure than you have switched off the power before flushing it. Otherwise, it would harm the units of the heater at a large scale. The non-contact electrical tester will come handy in this regard. Your group could be powered with more than one and a different power source. So before flushing it out, open the unit and make sure every power is shut down completely. The units are the heart of your tankless water heater. Once you damage them, your heater will not work correctly ever.
Cleaning or Flushing Process:
- First, check the electricity or gas connected to your water heater. Turn the electric circuit off at the breaker panel. If the machine is gas driven, then rotate the gas cut off counterclockwise. It would stop providing gas or electricity to the unit.
- Now you should get your hands on the unit wiring. It’s easy. With the help of your screwdriver, just remove the cover plate of the water heater unit. Now make sure no power is still flowing in the unit. Hold your non-contact electrical tester to the terminal and see if the tester light turns on. If there is a light, then go back and continue turning off all the circuits or the main circuit breaker of the house. Cannot proceed to the next step unless all wires through the tester show that there is no power accessing to the system.
- Now turn off the water connections. First, turn off the cold-water supply valve, which feeds cold water to the unit and then turns off the main valve, which supplies hot water from the heater to all the fixtures of the house or RV.
- Connect the one end of the hose pipe to the outlet of a submersible pump or pond pump and the other end of the hose to the cold-water isolation valve. Then connect the second garden hose to the hot water isolation valve. Take an adjustable wrench and tighten the garden hose coupler.
- Place the open end of the second hose in a bucket that can hold 5 gallons of the fresh white vinegar.
- Now open both the hot and cold water isolation valve and turn on the pump on the bucket so that the 5 gallons of white vinegar can circulate through the heater. Let it circulate for a minimum of 45 minutes.
- After 45 minutes, turn off the pump and let the vinegar drain. The vinegar will drain through the hoses into the bucket. Close the cold-water valve meantime.
- After draining, empty the bucket and put the open-ended tube back into the bucket. Now turn on the cold-water supply valve and keep it on for 5 minutes to let the water flow in the bucket. Close the cold-water supply valve again and disconnect the garden hose from the intel valve.
- Next, turn off the hot water valve and remove the intel screen of the tankless water heater as per the manual instruct. Give the screen a quick rinse to remove any kind of sediment and reinstall it.
- Now turn on the hot and cold-water supply valve. Let all the faucets open in the house for a few minutes so that if there is any air in the hot water line, it can get out. Close the faucets after making sure that all the airs been out.
- Finally, make sure there are no leaks in the water heater connection. Now turn on all the power supply, gas, or electric and have a test run of hot water flowing from all the faucets connected to the tankless water heater.
The steps upper mentioned shows how easy it is to clean flush the tankless water heater within a budget, without any professional help and within valuable time. So, what are you waiting for? Go out soon and purchase this latest appliance for the comfort of your future life or give a quick bath to tour tankless water heater if you already have one.