Help please, water heater wont drain...

Your are trying to drain it from the bottom of the tank, right?
Often times if no one ever drained some of the sediment out of the bottom every year like your suppost to there's a layer of sediment on the bottom.
Sometimes a metal coat hanger can clean it out enough to get it flowing.
Some have been so pluged up I've had to use an appliance cart to get them outside still full.
If I go to all that trouble I remove the cheap valve that came with it and replace it with a bronze nipple and a ball valve with a garden hose adaptor.

you want to tile under it ?

i just tiled around mine. and had enough extra tiles, so that when the tank was replaced, the tiling could be completed.

Have you opened the fixtures above the heater? If you have, your tank is full of sludge. Connect a hose to your laundry sink blow compressed air back up into the tank. Keep filling and repeating till all sediment is gone. Install an inline filter.

I'd never suggest just tiling around it, that would ceate a low area for water to just pool up if it ever leaked and not be the best look.

joecaption said:

I'd never suggest just tiling around it, that would ceate a low area for water to just pool up if it ever leaked and not be the best look.

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in my case. i had already replaced the HWH, and put a pan and drain under it. but on the old tile. i wasn't about to take it back out. so i just cut the tiles so they slid under the pan,but not the hwh. looked just fine.

but. if his tiles are cut nicely, it would look ok. and the little water that would pool there, if a leak, would be the least of his problems.

as always YMMV.

Well I feel like a bonehead... Flipped the relief valve at the top and its draining fine now. I thought the water would gush out of the pipe attached to the relief valve not the spigot at the bottom. That should make moving it 10 feet much easier. THANKS!

MisterSteve said:

Well I feel like a bonehead... Flipped the relief valve at the top and its draining fine now. I thought the water would gush out of the pipe attached to the relief valve not the spigot at the bottom. That should make moving it 10 feet much easier. THANKS!

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When you put it back in service leave the relief valve flipped to purge air while filling. You'll be glad you did.

i think someone built your house on its side.

Your water heater may have heat trapping nipples to connect up the pipes above and they act as check valves sometimes preventing you from draining the tank with a hot faucet correctly opened upstairs. But opening both a hot faucet and a cold faucet should guarantee that at least one of the heat trap check valves opens.

Draining the tank using only the temperature/pressure relief valve won't drain the tank down far enough to make it light enough to move.

Turn off the water heater heat before draining the tank, and do not turn the heat back on until all pipes are reconnected and you have water gushing from a hot faucet, proving that air has been purged.

That small white lines looks like some one taped off of the line for something like an ice maker.
Should never have been a saddle valve, they plug up and tend to leak.