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After a recent electric hot water tank leak on the second floor - I've decided to relocate the tank to the garage.

On the other side of the block wall in the garage - I have the laundry room - so we can tap into the h/c lines. The electrical panel is inside the house right near the entrance from the garage.

Lots of questions...

What should I be aware of while doing this - is this even a good idea? Should I keep the tank on the concrete floor or should I use some kind of barrier (over even a drain pan) Should I use expansion tank? Can I just connect to the h/c water line currently feeding the laundry room?

Appreciate your feedback and guidance/suggestions.

Thanks

MMJ
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2 Answers2

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There are a lot of questions to ask before an answer can be given:

What climate are you in? Is the garage heated or insulated? Is the hot water heater gas, electric, oil, solar, nuclear, gerbil-powered? Are going to do this yourself?

You can probably get some pretty good, free advice on this by calling one or two plumbers to come out and give you a quote and a recommendation.

It's a pretty big deal to move a hot water heater, even more so if it's gas or oil. There's electrical code (220v?), pipes, etc.

What about just putting in a nice pan on the second floor with a drain under it...might be cheaper and easier...

source: none, i'm not a plumber or electrician, but I do a lot of my own stuff.

user19347
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Have you considered adding a drain and rigid metal drain pan to the water heater in its current location. That's likely to be a much saner approach?

To move an electric water heater, the new location needs the following:

  1. 220v outlet on its own circuit with heavy-gauge wiring rated for an electric water heater. This is doable. If there isn't already such a circuit, you can hire an electrician to put in a new one, and you said the panel is pretty close by.

  2. An incoming cold water line, which will be harder, but if worse comes to worst, you can run a PEX line from the incoming cold water line on the second floor to the new location in the garage.

  3. An outgoing hot water line that serves as a trunk feeding the rest of the house with branch lines going to the fixtures. This is going to be the deal-breaker. The previous location probably has the correct trunkline hot water plumbing. If you seal that off and make a new input in your garage, you'll be supplying hot water to your whole house through a former branch line, which is narrow. Hot water pressure may decrease, and the time it takes to get hot water to distance fixtures will rise quite a lot. And you may be able to run fewer hot water outputs at once.
iLikeDirt
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