Unusual (?) Water Leak Problem from (?) Water Heater

[John From Detroit]

I had a leaky water heater after about a dozen years or so.. Had about a thousand tiny pinholes.. Sprayed all over the compartment or dripped onto the floor of it.. Due to the way water plays games it took me a while to figure out the source.

Others have also given great suggestions.

 

[PancakeBill]

Get some Marvel Mystery Oil for penetrating, just dribble it onto the top of the plug and it will seep in. Leave it for 30 minutes, then add a little more. Do this about 3 times... Then with proper sized socket, apply pressure.
If the tank has a leak, just buy a new water heater, I watched the youtube of replacing the tank, and for the difference in the price, a new water heater is well worth the difference. Swapping it out is fairly easy. The tough part is the stuff on the insiude, hopefully you have decent access.

 

[Iconoclast]

Well, I live two blocks from the ocean on the west coast with a pretty steady breeze from off the water, so I'm sure that has something to do with the rust...

I will buy a full socket set today that goes that large and try that.

On the issue of design, again, in the case of "stick built" houses (which I have much more knowledge about) the water heater is often placed in the garage and most codes I'm familiar with now require a pan at the base for exactly this problem. Here, any leak at all is guaranteed to soak into wood (I'm trying to figure out even now how to at least replace the floor directly under where the water heater is now (probably going to replace the unit with a tankless mounted to the exterior), which is where I figure the most water damage will probably be). Just seems like a design weakness if not outright flaw, especially given the weak nature of the many fittings versus how a house would typically be built.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

how difficult would it be to put some kind of small containment unit below it with a drain?

Not difficult, but each little improvement adds to the cost and typical RV buyers are notorious cheapskates. High-end RVs have fewer cost constraints and so have some of those nicities, but run of the mill units rarely do. You will also likely find that there are no shut-off valves for sink and toilet water lines, no condensation drain for the a/c, no leak pan under the washer-dryer, no three-way switches for lighting, or other features common in modern residential housing. It's basic plumbing and electrical, designed to minimum requirements and predicated to last through the short warranty period.

None of the homes I've ever owned were required to have drip pans under water heater or washer, but the newest was built in 1990. It's water heater was replaced in 2021 and still no requirement for a pan. New construction in my city is required to have a heater pan only if the location "would cause damage" in the event of a leak. No explanation of that caveat either, but a ground-level concrete floor in a separate utility room apparently is considered a no damage location.

 

[John From Detroit]

Get some Marvel Mystery Oil for penetrating, just dribble it onto the top of the plug and it will seep in. Leave it for 30 minutes, then add a little more. Do this about 3 times... Then with proper sized socket, apply pressure.
If the tank has a leak, just buy a new water heater, I watched the youtube of replacing the tank, and for the difference in the price, a new water heater is well worth the difference. Swapping it out is fairly easy. The tough part is the stuff on the insiude, hopefully you have decent access.

I replaced the tank on mine.. and fully agree the difference in price is not enough to warrant the task.

 

[Iconoclast]

I replaced the tank on mine.. and fully agree the difference in price is not enough to warrant the task.

I think we'll go tankless, which we wanted to do anyway. The money isn't there no matter which direction we go, so we might as well go in a direction that provides an added benefit. Plus, I figure that will give me the ability to pull out at least a section of the floor under where the old unit was and replace it.

 

[Iconoclast]

I really appreciate everyone's help here. This is probably the most informative and well-meaning forum I've ever been a part of.

 

[John From Detroit]

I think we'll go tankless, which we wanted to do anyway. The money isn't there no matter which direction we go, so we might as well go in a direction that provides an added benefit. Plus, I figure that will give me the ability to pull out at least a section of the floor under where the old unit was and replace it.

The problem with Tankless is that they do not "Stay hot" when it gets cold. So you need to make sure it drains if it's going to freeze.
Though I do admit that when you need more than 6 gallons of hot. Well "As much as you can eat" is a nice capacity

 

[p38fln]

The problem with Tankless is that they do not "Stay hot" when it gets cold. So you need to make sure it drains if it's going to freeze.
Though I do admit that when you need more than 6 gallons of hot. Well "As much as you can eat" is a nice capacity

I did some research into this and found one of the Suburban tankless models will automatically kick in a 110 volt element if it detects temperature below 45 or so and if that fails it a mechanical thermostat will open a drain valve just above freezing to let the water out. It was the Suburban Advantage model 5390A Advantage Tankless Continous Water Heater for RVs & Campers - Suburban

I'm not sure if the older Suburban tankless models you can find on Amazon have the anti freeze features

 

[PancakeBill]

Not a fan of the tankless unless it has a sort of recirculation system. Issue is, it is not instant, and depending on distance from heater to faucet, you have that many feet plus about 30 seconds to get hot. On a tank, that is a lot of wasted water. You can save it at the sink if you want, will give you a good idea of how much it takes.

 

[p38fln]

Not a fan of the tankless unless it has a sort of recirculation system. Issue is, it is not instant, and depending on distance from heater to faucet, you have that many feet plus about 30 seconds to get hot. On a tank, that is a lot of wasted water. You can save it at the sink if you want, will give you a good idea of how much it takes.

We have a (very cheap) tankless that I got from Camping World. it's almost the same delay as the tank heater to start spitting out hot water but the water takes a bit to warm all the way up because the heat exchanger starts cold. Still a nearly unlimited supply of hot water is nice when hooked to city water. When I'm running off the internal tank the 6 gallon limit helped enforce water rationing. Pros and cons either way. I like the tankless better and I'm going to get the much nicer suburban when I save up some money.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

I've seen more than a few reports of RVers who went tankless and were less than thrilled after doing so. Here and elsewhere, even YouTube. They often turn out to have drawbacks that are never mentioned in the ads. If you haven't done so, educate yourself further before making the switch.

One example (from an RVer who still likes his tankless choice):

 

[CharlesinGA]

I've seen more than a few reports of RVers who went tankless and were less than thrilled after doing so. Here and elsewhere, even YouTube. They often turn out to have drawbacks that are never mentioned in the ads. If you haven't done so, educate yourself further before making the switch.

Gary is correct. I frequent the three major RV forums, and several minor ones, and, when someone asks for opinions about them, I have not yet seen anyone say they were glad to have installed the tankless unit. Some even bought RV's with tankless and ended up removing them.

My travel buddy had a 2015 Winnebago Micro Mini 1706FB, the first year of the WBO trailers and the only model available that year. It had a tankless water heater as standard, and he gave up trying to use it. WBO received so many complaints they switched to a 6 gallon Atwood tank unit the next year.

Charles

 

[Ray-IN]

I think we'll go tankless, which we wanted to do anyway. The money isn't there no matter which direction we go, so we might as well go in a direction that provides an added benefit. Plus, I figure that will give me the ability to pull out at least a section of the floor under where the old unit was and replace it.

Check into that carefully. Temperature rise is stated in degrees, but begins with incoming water temperature, so if incoming water is 40° in winter, and the tankless temperature rise is 30°, the best it's going to output is 70° heated water.
The look at the BTU rating, how long is your LP going to last when the burner is a 64,000BTU per hour input. That's approx. 3/4 G LP per hour.

 

[Iconoclast]

Update:

First, the anode rod nut used a 15/16 socket.

And here's what's left of the anode rod:



And, as you can probably imagine, the inside of the tank looked like this:


And now to figure out my next move. The soonest I could get an RV guy here would be three weeks away. So, I have time to think (and stink). The owner of the park suggested I could even install a 110 20G apartment-sized water heater below the trailer (which would obviously include new exterior plumbing and wiring, which sounds pricy).

Oh, one more important factor to consider: electric and natural gas are essentially no additional cost to me. (But being more insulated from grid problems is also valuable!)

I really appreciate all the input so far. I'll reread all of it as I'm thinking on this.

 

[Kirk]

That anode looks to have been eaten away long ago and so makes a really bad tank far more probable. If you pay an RV tech to do the work it probably would cost less to replace the water heater than to just replace the tank. I would not want an electric water heater located outside of the RV because they are not designed to be exposed to the weather and that means more cost for electricity when cold and electrical problems if moisture should get into it. There are small electric water heaters that should fit inside of the RV.

 

[p38fln]

If you're trying to stay isolated from the grid as much as you can get a new RV water heater. They really aren't that expensive compared to a propane fired house water heater and a 110 volt water heater takes forever to heat up unless it's like a pancake size. Remember if you ever need to move your RV again you don't really want to have a water heater that isn't self contained