Drain Hot Water Heater?

[tango]

We don't have a floor drain in our basement.

Now I have bigger issues with leaking under some sinks so a plumber is coming out tomorrow. Home ownership is costing way too much. I've owned 3 homes now and the bigger you go, the more problems you have. I need to downsize.

Is the drain valve on the heater high enough that you can put something underneath it? If the contents are still under pressure that should help get a load of it out if you can route it to some other drain (e.g. to the washing machine, as Josiah mentioned). Then perhaps you can drain it into a bucket and pour the bucket into some other drain? If you're having a plumber out perhaps he can add a new drain point so you can connect a hose from the heater directly to the waste water pipe and have something in place for future use?

It's a big advantage with being able to do stuff yourself. At my last house I did some electrical work but didn't have the confidence to do much more. In my current house I've literally ripped half the house back to bare walls, taken all the electrical cables out, removed the entire heating loop and a good chunk of the plumbing and started rebuilding it from scratch.

Sometimes the best way to gain confidence is to just get bold with it. The first time I started ripping the walls down I wasn't sure what I'd find but learned a lot along the way. I didn't expect to use north of 100lb of cement and mortar to repair holes in the walls, nor did I expect quite such an "interesting" time with electrical cables but that's the way it goes.

Tomorrow's task is plumbing. I need to turn the water off to the entire house so I can add some additional isolation valves that will let me work on other stuff without shutting off everything. That valve hasn't been operated in at least 13 years and probably a lot longer. I just hope it works.

 

[Lamb]

Is the drain valve on the heater high enough that you can put something underneath it? If the contents are still under pressure that should help get a load of it out if you can route it to some other drain (e.g. to the washing machine, as Josiah mentioned). Then perhaps you can drain it into a bucket and pour the bucket into some other drain? If you're having a plumber out perhaps he can add a new drain point so you can connect a hose from the heater directly to the waste water pipe and have something in place for future use?

It's a big advantage with being able to do stuff yourself. At my last house I did some electrical work but didn't have the confidence to do much more. In my current house I've literally ripped half the house back to bare walls, taken all the electrical cables out, removed the entire heating loop and a good chunk of the plumbing and started rebuilding it from scratch.

Sometimes the best way to gain confidence is to just get bold with it. The first time I started ripping the walls down I wasn't sure what I'd find but learned a lot along the way. I didn't expect to use north of 100lb of cement and mortar to repair holes in the walls, nor did I expect quite such an "interesting" time with electrical cables but that's the way it goes.

Tomorrow's task is plumbing. I need to turn the water off to the entire house so I can add some additional isolation valves that will let me work on other stuff without shutting off everything. That valve hasn't been operated in at least 13 years and probably a lot longer. I just hope it works.

We have a slope off the back of the house that I might be able to drain some water into a 5 gallon bucket safely. I don't need to really empty the thing fully, do I? Just release 3-4 gallons?

 

[tango]

We have a slope off the back of the house that I might be able to drain some water into a 5 gallon bucket safely. I don't need to really empty the thing fully, do I? Just release 3-4 gallons?

I don't know if you have to drain the entire thing or not. If you have a slope off the back could you drain the whole thing down the slope?

 

[Lamb]

I don't know if you have to drain the entire thing or not. If you have a slope off the back could you drain the whole thing down the slope?

Yeah, it goes down into the neighbor's driveway

 

[tango]

These are the kind of situations when I wonder whether having some kind of pump on hand would be worth it. If you could attach a pump to a long hose, drain your tank into a bucket and then pump the water from the bucket to wherever you need it, that would seem convenient. Where I'm thinking of putting a water heater the hose would need to be very long so maybe if we do explore that any further I'd add a junction to the main drainage pipe so I could pump straight into it.