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SAN JOSE — Host, Sarah Rutan: Prior to replacing a water heater in your home, you’ll need to be aware of safety code requirements. Today we’re in San Jose with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Yussef Nesme of Rayne Plumbing and Sewer Service to learn more.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Yussef Nesme: So, it’s often that we get asked by homeowners, “I’m replacing my water heater. Do I need to pull a permit?” The answer is, “Yes.” They recommend that you pull a permit any time you touch a water heater, even if it’s just removing it for a little bit, and then putting it back in. But if it’s a new one, the cities do want you to pull a permit. The cost depends on the city, but it’s usually under $200. Sometimes it’s a little bit more, depending on your city, again. Something you would want to inquire with them.

But one thing I want to go over, too, is code. Whether you get a permit, or you don’t get a permit, you should know about the code because whether you’re going to sell your home, or for your own safety, it’s stuff that you need to know about. First, we’re going to go over strapping, which I think is the most important. Your water heater needs to be strapped. It doesn’t matter where it is. It needs to be strapped in case of an earthquake.

These are what the straps look like. And the way you’re going to want to put the straps on is you’re going to put one on top. And it’s got to be nine inches below the water heater. So, no, maybe that’s a little too much. That’s about nine inches right there. And you’re going to want to strap it to something behind, so, it could be – . And, again, the city, it depends on the city, but you would want to strap it to something where it’s either a 2’ x 4’ connected to the wall.

Sometimes there’s not really, like, a flat surface in the back. What they really want you to do is make sure that the water heater cannot move left to right. So, like I said, you might want to have to put 2’ x 4’s back there. Or a lot of the times they recommend that you do plumber’s tape to anchor it to a different part of the wall to where it’s steady and it’s not going to move left and right, should an earthquake happen.

And then the bottom strap needs to be about 4 inches above the gas controls, right here. And that is going to be code. And so, you would strap both of them to something in the back. And sometimes it could get tricky, depending on where the water heater is placed. But at all times the water heater does need to be strapped.

The other thing that is huge with code is having a water heater pan, and draining it out. So, if it’s inside of the house, you’re going to need to have a water heater pan that goes under the water heater. You’re going to have to connect some PVC piping, and run it out to an open space to somewhere outside of your home, or into the crawlspace, or something like that. But it does need to drain out. The reason they do this is, if for whatever reason your water heater starts leaking, you’re not going to damage the inside of your house. So, that’s one thing that is a must, also, for complying with the codes. And that’s in most cities in California.

Now, one thing you should keep in mind: If this is in your garage, if the water heater is in the garage, you should still have the pan. And depending on the city, they would still want you to run it out. But we recommend go ahead and run out the drain line to outside, just because a lot of people have good possessions inside of their garage. And if your water heater’s leaking, and you just have the pan, and it doesn’t have any piping draining out, all the water’s just going to spill out, and your garage is going to be full of water. So, we recommend doing it. It’s really inexpensive to do, and it’s fairly easy to do as well. But these two things are musts.

The other thing is, if your water heater is in a garage, it is mandatory to have a water heater stand. So, the water heater stands you could get at, you know, most supply houses and stuff like that. And the reason that they want it elevated is because of emissions. There’s a gas opening right here. And they worry that with the gas, the emissions from the car, that it could combust and it could blow up your water heater. So, that’s the reason that they want it on a stand. And that is also water heater code for most cities in the Bay Area.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local top rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.info.

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SAN JOSE – Host, Sarah Rutan: Like most home appliances, a water heater needs to be regularly maintained, but in the case of an older unit, it may not be such a good idea. Today we’re in San Jose with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Yussef Nesme of Rayne Plumbing and Sewer Service to learn more.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Yussef Nesme: Today we’re going to be going over water heaters and how to maintain them. We often get calls from customers and friends who ask about water heater maintenance and things that they could do to go ahead and get a little bit more lifespan out of their water heater. And the tricky part is when to do the maintenance, and if it’s okay for your system to try a maintenance program. And the reason I say that is if you have your water heater for more than five or six years, we usually don’t recommend trying to do any type of maintenance. There’s probably already so much calcium buildup and so many mineral deposits in the water heater that if you tried doing some of the maintenance programs that we’re going to go over today, it might open up a can of worms.

So, the first thing we’ll go over is about flushing the water heater. So, if we go down here, you’ll see there’s a drain valve. And when you flush a water heater, what you want to do is you want to attach a hose to the valve, open it up, and let the water heater drain. One thing that I do is I attach the hose and then I run the hose out to my yard, and I make sure that I, you know, water my plants, water my lawn with the water that’s in the tank. That way it doesn’t waste the water. And I do that once a year, sometimes two times a year. And any more than that is just kind of overkill.

Now, one thing that I recommend, if you are going to do this, you’ve got to understand that if it’s been five or seven years, there is a good chance that there’s a lot of calcium and mineral deposits that will be coming out from there. So, if you have an older system and you try to open this up, you might get a piece of mineral deposit in the valve, where it’s not going to close again. And that’s where I said you might open a can of worms. And that’s why if it’s been five or seven years, I would just let it go. But if it’s a newer water heater, I definitely recommend attaching a hose, draining it once or twice a year.

Now, another thing that I recommend is what we have here is a ball valve. A ball valve is not what comes with a standard water heater. But what we recommend is as soon as you get a new water heater, have a plumber go ahead and put one of these in. They work a lot better. And nothing is going to get stuck in there. Even if it does, the ball valve has a component, if you look inside, it’s going to go ahead and close no matter what. As opposed to a gate valve, that comes standard with a water heater, it’s often that mineral deposits or debris gets stuck inside of the valve, and all of a sudden you can’t close it.

And the next thing we’re going to go over are anode rods. And not every water heater has accessibility to the anode rod. But inside every tank there’s an anode rod. What the anode rod does, it’s a sacrificial piece of metal that they put inside of the water heater in order for it to absorb all the minerals, all the calcium buildup. So, it eats away at this rod, instead of eating away at your water heater. Now, what some people do is after four or five years, they replace the rod. Because once the minerals have eaten it up so much, there’s no more that it can eat, and it’ll start eating at your tank. But if you replace this, and you put a new one in, it’s going to attract all the mineral deposits and all the calcium, and it’ll eat away at your anode rod instead of your tank.

So, those are the two things that pretty much you can do to flush your water heater. There’s not really any chemicals or anything like that that you can use to flush it. We just go ahead and recommend doing a regular flush. Make sure that your water is shut off. And, yeah, that’s pretty much what we recommend doing for water heater maintenance.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local top rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.info.

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SAN JOSE — Host, Sarah Rutan: Hard water is a common problem and can cause damage to your plumbing system. Today we’re in San Jose with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Yussef Nesme of Rayne Plumbing and Sewer Service to learn about a green solution to solve your hard water issue.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Yussef Nesme: In the Bay Area, we have a big problem with hard water, not in all regions but like in Santa Clara County where I live. The problem with hard water is it usually causes a lot of damage to your pipes, to your water heater and to your fixtures. It also gives you that rough feeling when you come out of the shower. All in all, it’s just not good to have inside of the plumbing system in your home.

Many people deal with hard water now with saltwater systems that take a lot of maintenance and are usually pretty expensive so what I would like to bring to the attention of the consumers is a new system that we have that is the greenest, soft water system on the market and what it is, is a ceramic magnet system that simply is attached to your incoming water lines as such and you’ll have five of these, so you’ll put three on your incoming water line and two onto your water heater, one before and one after. The way it works is the magnets inside the system will actually break down the molecular structure of the minerals that go through your water. So, instead of sticking onto your pipe, they will actually flow through and give more longevity to your pipes, to your water heater and to your fixtures. This is the greenest system that there is and its really inexpensive, its easy to install, lifetime guarantee and no maintenance.

Host, Sarah Rutan: Thank you to our Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Yussef Nesme of Rayne Plumbing and Sewer Service. I’m Sarah Rutan.