Well, SDGuy's waterheater is probably at end of life (going on 16 years old), so I thought I'd replace it before it either bursts into flames or has a catastrophic failure.

The thing is located in a closet in the garage - I've been told that because of this location, a tankless waterheater is not feasible (not enough ventilation, at least not enough without spending $$$ to create the necessary ventilation).

My next thought was to get one of these:

[www.rvpartscenter.com]

to place under the new waterheater, so that in the unlikely event of a leak, I could at least have some control over where the water would drain - onto the concrete garage floor, instead of towards the interior living space.

Having experienced one flood already, I'm probably a bit paranoid about water - but I was just wondering what others thought of this idea..

$80 is crazy !

You can get a hot water heater catch pan at any big box for $20

[www.lowes.com]

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lafinfil
$80 is crazy !

You can get a hot water heater catch pan at any big box for $20

[www.lowes.com]

THANKS! I had a feeling there should be a product like this out there - just never saw one in the stores (or didn't look hard enough) - that's why I started thinking about getting a shower pan. Looks like I'm off to Lowes...

You can also get a larger one that is meant to go under a washing machine, also $20 range, Home Depot etc. That little pan wouldn't catch much water, by the look of it.

The size of the pan doesn't matter much. Since the water heater inlet is connected to the water main a burst water heater will pour out many times the volume of the water heater in just an hour or so, hugely exceeding the capacity of any pan you put under there. What matters is that the drain line on the pan is connected to a pipe or hose that goes somewhere that you don't mind getting flooded.

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Davester is quite right . . .

Rinnai makes a tankless waterheater that can be mounted outside of your house if you want to reconsider the tankless waterheater.

Personally I have never seen a hot water heater "burst"

My experience is that they just start weeping and leave a trickle of water (YMMV)

As long as the outlet drain is as big as the inlet the water heater pans are fine.

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fil- hot water heater 'bursting' used to happen in the bad old days before relief valves. Ditto boiler bursting. Agree on the round pan- plumb it to a local drain or away from the main area of the garage. Any leaker will drain out that way. The issue is more that you don't see the heater very often, and so any problem will go undetected if you do too good of a job of hiding it.

Over the years, I have replaced several water heaters in our rental properties as well as our home and usually when they start to fail, as lafinfil said they trickle.

I knew our LP Gas water heater in our home didn't have many years left so I was considering one of the tankless systems but as it turns out it failed before I made the switch. It didn't leak, the failure was due to a bad regulator or whatever its called. So I just dropped another LP Gas unit in. The reason I considered tankless is due to the ever increasing LP Gas rates in my area. The last bill they charged us was $2.99 per whatever unit of measure they use. We seldom use LP Gas for anything else but hot water so our rate is high It's costing us about $55.00 per month (family of 4) just to heat our water. I never did determine what the actual cost savings would be with a tankless system but the cost of the unit plus installation was much higher than a standard water heater and payback would most likely be several years down the road. The tankless systems are NOT do it yourself installations and I would have never attempted it.

Yes, it's yet another water heater thread on Macresource . . .

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qdog
Rinnai makes a tankless waterheater that can be mounted outside of your house if you want to reconsider the tankless waterheater.

Thanks for the thought - but that's really not an option - SDGuy lives in a townhouse complex, so nothing can go on the outside. I suppose it could be mounted inside the garage instead of in the waterheater closet, but the ventilation problem would probably be the same (my sister had one installed at her house around two months ago - located in the open, in the garage - and had to have major ventilation pipes added - the grand total was about $3.5K for the whole thing).

The closet measures 29" across by 33" deep - and from looking at waterheater pans online, it looks like they come in 2" increments in diameter, starting at 22". So - looks like a 28" pan for me. I'll probably just aim the drain into the garage - I don't care too much if the concrete floor gets wet - I'll set up a flood alarm [www.thenaturalhome.com] in the pan to let me know if a leak occurs. My main concern is water getting into the interior living space - experiencing that once was quite enough for me.

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lafinfil
Personally I have never seen a hot water heater "burst"

My experience is that they just start weeping and leave a trickle of water (YMMV)

As long as the outlet drain is as big as the inlet the water heater pans are fine.

Hmmm. I've seen both behaviours. Usually, you figure out something is wrong because of a weep/trickle turns into a full on flood. However, I've also seen the bottom of the water heater just completely give out all at once (perhaps burst isn't the right word) resulting in a catastrophic flood. If your water heater is inside the living space, I don't think you ever want to gamble on the mode of failure.

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Every house I have lived in and/or owned has had the WH in the basement so I see mine daily
It sits in the laundry room with the water softener and filters, pressure tank for the well etc ...
and there is a floor drain a couple feet away

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