DIY – Drain and Flush Your Water Heater for Better Economy Posted on December 29th, 2009
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It’s amazing how many people are unaware of even the most basic home maintenance tasks. Did you know that your water heater, if you have a tank heater (which most do), should be drained and flushed out every year? This is especially true if you have very hard water or if the water from the supply line goes through your water heater before being filtered or softened.
The sediment that invariably builds up in a water heater over time reduces its efficiency, increases the probability of rust or corrosion, and shortens the life of your water heater. Throwing stuff away is bad. Right? Buying a new water heater at $400+ every 5-7 years sucks. Right? Then make it last!
All that’s required for this job is a place to drain the water heater to (in my case, a below-grade sump pump), some pliers to help coax along uncooperative valves, and about fifteen minutes’ worth of your time. Here’s the procedure, with pictures.
Start by cleaning the dust and debris off the top of your water heater. There’s always some, no matter how clean your house is. Your water heater is probably hidden in the corner of a utility closet or down in the basement. Most of us never look at our water heaters so long as they’re functioning. Now check which pipe going into your water heater is hot and which is cold. The pipes are probably covered in insulation (if not, spend the $4 and get some for the hot water line to increase efficiency). I took it off for this photo so you can see what’s going on. The large pipe in the center is the “chimney” from which the exhaust from the burning gas vents. This should be checked for leaks. Use a spray bottle with water and a little bit of dish soap and spray the vent to see if it bubbles up anywhere. If so, duct tape or use heat sink silver tape to close off the leak. That’s CO2 (pure Al Gore) leaking into your house, which isn’t good unless you have a lot of plants. I once knew a guy who vented his water heater and furnace into his greenhouse for added CO2.
The lines going into the water tank should be labeled hot and cold, probably stamped into the top of the water heater. Trace the cold line to it’s nearest shutoff valve. If there isn’t one, turn off the water main coming into your home. 
Either way, you want the water entering your water heater (cold) to be off. Now at the bottom you’ll find the gas controls. They’re usually a square box with two or three knobs on it.
One of the knobs will say “Off – Pilot – Hot” and another will have temperature ranges. Turn the first knob to “Pilot” and the second knob to its lowest temperature setting. Make note of where the second knob was positioned before–probably on a manufacturer’s mark for the optimum heat setting to save the most energy. You’ve now shut off the heat so the water heater will no longer try to heat water.
In the picture at right you can see the gas box with the Pilot-Hot knob on top and the temperature control knob at front. The large pipe coming into the gas box is the gas line. Directly below the box is a cover (humped). That cover shields the pilot light and gas burners underneath the water heater tank.
If you’re lucky, like us, and you have a separate valve just for the water heater, you can now go run the dishwasher, a load of laundry, or take a short shower to drain most of the water out of the water heater without wasting it. Otherwise, do this in the summer time so you can capture the water in buckets or something to throw on your garden or lawn. Most water heaters hold between 30 and 50 gallons. The label on the unit’s side will say what its capacity is.
Next, attach a garden hose to the drain valve, located somewhere near the bottom of the water heater. It should accept a standard garden hose “female” end. Make sure you aren’t attaching to the pressure relief valve, near the top of the heater, which will only accept the male end of a hose.
Fasten the hose as tightly as you can without damaging anything. This is important because you don’t want it to leak. If you have some, put plumber’s tape around the threads before attaching the hose for extra leak-security. This is important because the water in the heater is likely very hot and you don’t want it spraying all over you.
Once it’s attached, run the other end of the hose to your drain point. Even if the drain is right next to the water heater, you should use a hose. Otherwise, the water will come out in an uncontrolled splash. At the far end of the hose, attach something to act as a filter. In this case, I took a t-shirt, tied off one end, and then slipped it over the hose end and tied it in place with string. Socks, panty hose, or whatever will work. Something you aren’t really worried about getting rust stains on is fine. This t-shirt is destined for the rag bin anyway, so it was perfect.
Now open the drain valve slowly. Remember: lefty-loosey, righty-tighty. Let it drain slowly, opening the valve more 
and more as you gain confidence it won’t spray from the hose attachment. Open it most of the way unless you have some kind of drain restriction on the other end. I took the cover off of our sump pump hole so I could more easily see what was going on and fit the hose with its custom filter cover in there.
Don’t do like I did and put the hose in right where the float to activate the pump is located, blocking it so that you are threatened with a flood and have to run to move things before your basement becomes a lake. Learn from my mistakes, people.
Let the water heater drain completely. Then go to the shutoff valve you turned the water off from (the water going into the water heater). Turn the water on for about half a minute, then shut it off again. Do this two or three times to “flush” the water heater tank. For those bucketing the water, this will amount to about 9 extra gallons (at most).
Now shut off the drain valve on the water heater (righty-tighty) and remove the hose. Wipe the drain valve off and watch for leaks. Then turn the water on to the water heater again. You might hear it entering the unit, but you probably won’t because of the thick insulation. While that’s happening, go to a sink or bathtub and turn on the hot 
water faucet. It will likely spit a lot of air before finally producing cold water. Let the air blow out completely before turning it off again. This will help the water heater fill without back-pressure from air in the system.
Now go back to your hose as the water heater refills and remove your filter. Be careful, as it could be full of rust chips and minerals and sediment from the bottom of the water heater. Throw all that in the garbage. If you haven’t drained your water heater in years, you’ll likely have a fair amount of it.
Once the water heater has had at least five or six minutes to refill, turn the gas back on to “hot.” Wait for the ignition, which you’ll hear as a “whoosh” like when you light the barbecue. Let it run for a few seconds, then turn the temperature control knob back to its proper setting. Check everything again for leaks and you’re done!
Now a quick word about that pressure control valve. If your water heater doesn’t have a valve that looks like the one at the right, you should have a professional plumber look at it. If it’s been capped off or plugged with something, you’ll need to have it replaced. Why?
Because that valve is what literally keeps your water heater from turning into a missile should something go wrong and the water overheat and build too much pressure. That’s why. Have you seen Mythbusters? They have an episode where they removed that valve (plugged it), overheated the water tank and BOOM! The water heater launched like a missile through the roof of a house and into the air. That’s not good for your insurance or health, so make sure that relief valve is there and proper.
The gas will have a redundant “fuse” that’s made to burn and cut off the gas flow should something at the control box go wrong. If the gas won’t come back on and you smell a little funky burning metal smell, it means that the fuse was likely tripped for some reason. Get a professional to come in, evaluate it, and replace the box or fuse if necessary.
So there you go! If your water heater is an efficient model (most are now), flushing it occasionally will do wonders for improving its life span and efficiency. There are a handful of models that don’t require yearly maintenance, using some kind of swirling turbo action inside to push the debris out through centrifugal action. I saw one at Sears. It was expensive.
When this water heater finally needs replacement, I’ll probably switch it for an on-demand heater, which uses less energy and has no maintenance at all. We’ll cover how those work in another blog post.
DIY – Simple, Easy Bottle Drying Rack for $2 or Less Posted on December 24th, 2009
I think most of you already know that we have a baby on the way at our house. In fact, it’s getting pretty imminent. So we’ve been doing all of the things that new parents do to prepare for a new member of the family. You know, reading books that don’t really tell you anything about child care, telling everyone we can who might possibly send us a check in honor of the joyous occasion (PayPal link on the left..), etc.
I’ve been doing a few things around the house to fix up and rearrange as well. We had to get the cat’s entirely out of the kitchen, for instance, which meant I had to build a new feeding station for them. So I built a new shelf-thing that will adequately hold food bowls out of reach of the dogs while supporting the weight of a couple of cats as well.
Well, in the process of looking at baby stuff and talking to family and friends who have recently had children, I’ve learned that there are a ton of gadgets for babies. One of the things that commonly comes up are “drying racks” and “sanitizers” for baby bottles.
Whether you breast feed or not, you’re going to need a bottle sooner or later. We now have several. They make microwave “sanitizer” contraptions, plastic drying rack things that hang bottles above your sink, and more. I have a lot of problems with those, which you can probably guess at. One of them being that they require me to buy something.
Remember: green is the new word for “frugal” which is the nice word for “cheap.”
So I decided to make a bottle drying rack on my own. It turned out pretty awesome, I think. All you need is a stable platform (I got this trophy base at a thrift store for 25 cents) and something to put in it to hold bottles. I was originally going to use coat hangers, but decided that wood doesn’t rust, so it would work better. The dowel cost me $1.30. The rest was just me and my tools.
I took the base and drew out lines on it and then marked drill starts with a punch. I measured the dowel against the tallest of the bottles (an 8oz) and rounded to the nearest easy mark (7-1/4 inches). I then marked this along the dowel and cut it with a hand saw. The dowel is 1/4″ thick, so you know.
Then I took my hand drill, placed the base on top of something I could drill into, and found a bit that was just slightly (1/16″) skinnier than the dowel. Then I braced the bit and turned it into the base. Oh, did I mention I used a hand brace rather than an electric drill? For angled holes, you tend to get more control this way.
The holes are angled out at about 15 degrees. I eyeballed it. Once all the holes were drilled, just press the dowels into place and use a rubber mallet to drive them home.
No glue, nails, screws, etc. are required. This means that if the dowel warps or breaks, you can push it back out and replace it easily. I also didn’t put any finish on the dowels as I didn’t want any toxins coming in contact with the bottles.
Viola! A bottle drying rack. It looks nice, sits stably on the counter or shelf, and does the job well. All for less than two bucks.
DIY – Fixing Your Roof Posted on December 15th, 2009
Winter is a crappy time of year to have to get up on the roof of your house and fix it, but if you gotta, you gotta. This time of year is when you’re most likely to find leaks as the early snows and ice hit and then melt before the real freeze sets in for the winter. So if you have a leak, you can get it fixed. Keep this bookmarked, it might come in handy in the spring too.
The roof on our home was reshingled with Class 4 high wind/hail shingles to withstand the elements and give the roof a 20 year warranty. So leaks aren’t likely. There was a leak, though, which wasn’t the shingle’s fault. An addition to build a carport/car cover had a piece of its metal top blow off due to not being properly secured by the amateur builder. It’s not the first thing I’ve had to fix on that addition. I’ve added 2×4s to strengthen the long wall which had no lateral supports to stop it from swaying. Anyway, the fix it part was easy – I just got a piece of metal about the right size, bent it into shape to fit, screwed it in place with weatherproofed screws, and painted it. Still, it was a pain.
More commonly, though, you will likely need to replace a broken or torn asphalt shingle on your roof. It’s much easier than you think. This short 1-1/2 minute video explains it all:
DIY Christmas Series – Cool Weekend Holiday Crafts, Pt 1 Posted on December 11th, 2009
Alright, people, it’s the big time of year when everyone runs out and spends a lot of money they don’t have on stuff they don’t need so that they can have a Bing Crosby Christmas. Great for them. Now, the rest of us are going to have a fun holiday. Why? Because we spend our holidays breaking making stuff. That’s why!
So I’m going to do a series over the next few days featuring some of the coolest Instructables and other DIY things I’ve found. These will show you how to take all kinds of stuff that you’re either throwing away (or hiding from your wife so she won’t throw it away for you) and make that stuff into cool, festive decorations.
I was going to include a do-it-yourself on how to turn an old leather jacket into a Christmas tree skirt, but I just couldn’t bring myself to it. I mean, I got that jacket when I was 17, man. It’s been to both a GWAR and a Grateful Dead concert on the same weekend! How epic is that?! Nope, I had to put it back into hiding (see wife comment above).
Anyway, here’s the first installment of this series.
How to make Christmas ornaments from toys!
This one is just cool. It’s an Instructable on taking old toys from your rummage drawer, the stuff your kids no longer play with, or out of one of those $3 giant trash bags of toys at the Salvation Army and turning them into ornaments. Plus, we also have cats, so I totally understand his aversion to pricey and breakable ornaments.
Plus, it’s way better than the Rolling Rock and Killians bottles stuffed with Christmas lights we used when I was in college. Hey, at least they were green and (sort of) red. Right? Plus, Utah doesn’t have a glass deposit system, so we were saving them from the garbage and stuff. Really. At least for a while.
USB powered LED Christmas tree
What could possibly bring out the Yuletide spirit better than geek toys? Do-it-yourself geek toys, that’s what. Not since Lego Robotix came out has anything as killer as this appeared to brighten up your Christmas nerdiness. Seriously. Making one of these will totally make you the envy of the office as you walk into work, sit down, and plug in your Holiday Spirit for all to bask in. The other developers/programmers/engineers/whateveryougeekscallyourselvesnow will be totally jealous.
The closest I ever got to a DIY holiday decoration this cool was when I modified my Toyota Corolla to light up with chain-reaction Christmas light neon throughout the inside. The fire was totally on purpose too, to celebrate the Old Norse Yule ritual. I pride myself in being totally into diversity of religious views and stuff. The firefighter who put it out was Jewish, so there was some Hanukkah goin’ on too. Then I used some Swahili-sounding words on the insurance lady when she explained to me what “liability” means. Can you say Kwanza? Booya.
Tune in again as this series continues. I’ll have a lot more of these ultra-cool DIY holiday decorations!
DIY – Changing Your Car’s Oil To Save Money Posted on November 22nd, 2009
I was going to make my own do-it-yourself (DIY) for this, but found this video on the subject and figured it was better than anything I would do. I might still make my own attempt at it, but this video is far better.
An oil change as most lube shops or repair garages runs you $30-$60 for most vehicles. My 6-cylinder Toyota, for instance, uses 5 quarts of oil and costs about $50 to get an oil change at the garage. The same garage charges $40 to do my wife’s small Honda 4-cylinder car.
To buy your own parts to change your oil will cost you about $3/quart of oil, $8-$12 for the replacement filter, and about twenty minutes of time. Changing the oil in my Toyota pickup, for instance, takes me about twenty minutes and costs $18 (I buy the oil by the case, saving on each quart). So I save about $32 each oil change.
Since the average American drives about 12,000 miles per year and a car requires an oil change about every 3,500 miles, that’s 3.5 oil changes per year. That means that if I drove the average amount of most Americans each year (I don’t) I’d be saving $112/year just on my own pickup.
Now consider that most households have two cars. For many people, that savings amounts to a month’s car payment at that point. Nice!
Changing the oil is not hard to do at all, and I’ll let this great video show you how:
