
Repairing a Broken Water Heater Drain Plug
Dave SolbergDescription
We received the question, from one of our members, that their water heater drain plug broke. Now I'm assuming it's the plastic style. There's a couple of different models. We've got Suburban and Atwood. This unit here is where the water heater is at.
It's got an access panel. Most of them will come off or just swing down. Now the drain plug on this one is down at the bottom here. And this one happens to be a metal drain plug. Typically, that means it's going to have an anode rod inside of it.
Now the stainless steel tanks act as an anode rod in the other models of it. This one actually has a rod in it. So some of the chemicals inside attack that rod and is kind of sacrificial. Uh. If it's the metal plug like this and that has broken off, then you pretty much gonna have to remove the water heater and tap that whole thing out.
Drill a hole in it and get a tap. That's a pretty major expense. Hopefully it's just the plastic plug and with the plastic plug, there's nothing behind it. So if that plug broke out, you pretty much just have a plastic threaded piece in there and you can do one of two things; you can take a drill, a series of small holes create a little bit of a slot and try to put a large flat head screwdriver in and pull it out. If that doesn't work, then I would just suggest drilling a hole and just getting a little bit bigger each time to kind of get those plastic thing out of there.
And then just start cutting and pulling that plastic out. Once you do that though, you wanna really flush that water heater after you do it. Make sure you'd have no plastic fillings inside that water heater, but you should be able to get in and just kind of work that out again. If it's the metal kind, probably looking at taking the unit out and getting it fixed at a repair facility.
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