Water Heaters - Water has orange tint to it??

Hey all.

I replaced my electric water heater with one that my folks had (they switched to gas) the heater is over 15 years old, but the water going through it passed through a water softner first. The first mistake I made when I hooked it up was I forgot to flush the tank. Now I have a rust coloured water (which it probally is) I thought with time it would enentually flush itself through, but it has been a couple weeks now and it is still rusty colured. Any suggestions on what to do? Will I have to drain the tank and flush it that way? Ot do I need a new tank. Thanks.

The orange water sounds like you and/or your parents (previous owners) have water with high iron content. Even though the water passed through a softener, the orange color will remain if allowed to sit. If your parents never flushed or had the tank flushed,there is probably a lot of rusty sediment in the bottom. This may take a long time(months or years) to aleviate its self.Your best course of action would be to manually drain and flush the tank to remove as much as possible. Drain and flush with a filter(old knee-hi) attached to the discharge hose so you can see whats in the tank.At 15yrs old you may have internal parts going bad. The annode rod and dip tube,if going bad will show up as small white particles in the "sock.
For instructions on drain and flush procedures see the following link.

http://forum.doityourself.com/showthread.php?t=134483

Good luck and post back with any further questions you may have.

Thanks for your response. In regards with the flushing, the tank is in my basement and I have no sump hole. If I ran a hose from the tank to my sink, which is about 3 feet above the spigot, will there be enough push to get the water to go into the sink.

Best solution is to get a small pump. But otherwise you might try this procedure: Hook up the hose from WH drain to the sink. Open the drain valve with water shut-off to the WH still open. Allow it to power flush this way for a minute or two. Now shut off the inlet water and open a hot water tap on the first floor. Allow to drain as much as it will.

Repeat this procedure 2 or 3 times and see if water color improves.

If the rust was sediment from your parents water, it might clean up. If it is rust because the tank is rusting, the life expectancy of the tank will be very short.

Check around to see if you have a floor drain located somewhere within the basement. If you have a furnace with air conditioning there may be one.Remove the strainer if possible as this will be a lot of water.

If you were to drain the tank into a container above the drain on the tank it would seek its own level and not drain further.

You might be able to disconnect the trap on the sink and place the hose in the pipe. This would get the level down low enough that most of the sediment could be removed. This will take longer to flush than the floor drain would as you are still pushing "uphill"

The only other option would be to drain the tank into a bucket and carry it to the sink.

Good luck and post back

I suppose I could use the "workout". I will try both suggestions and see what happens. Being as the tank is that old, It might be in my best interest just to buy a new tank. Regardless I will post back and let you guys (gals) know. Might be a few days (darn kids) though. Thanks again.

15 years old is right at or beyond the useful life of most water heaters. In my opinion you should save yourself alot of trouble and just replace it.

Just an update up for the people who responded to my my post, I drained the tank (about 40 buckets!!) and then I flushed it and everything is good again for the time being, but being as old as it is it might be a temporary fix for now. Thanks to all who responded.


I had another post that was somewhere above this one, that got moved to electrical, about the tank blowing fuses all the time. I changed out both elements and the problem has dissappeared. I think that the bottom element was on it's way out and the top one was doing all the work. Maybe not, but just a theory.