Water Heater – Gas/Electric

Sept. 2025:

When I had worked on the problem below labeled June 2025 I had broken two Philips screw tips trying to get the screws out of the cover plate on the bottom of the WH tank cabinet…they didn’t budge even using my impact drill. The tank fits into a basement cabinet just for it and those plates are removed to access the plumbing on the bottom and backside of the tank. I was able to get 3-4 of the screws out though and that gave me the leverage to bend the cover plate out of the way so my son could work on the repair. With that done I left that bent plate in place since I wasn’t traveling anytime soon but it was on the list of things to do before travel. And early Sept. son came over with a grinder, ground off the screw heads and we got the plate and assorted metal pieces off the underside of the WH frame, got them bent back into shape and scraped off the rust, than primed them with Rustolium. Son will be back today to reinstall them. I used stick on foam tape to replace the silicone caulking that was used by Winnebago. Those plates are there to insulate the underside and plumbing of the tank which would be exposed to atmosphere if they weren’t there, so important to replace them. I’m not certain why they used caulking at all as it would hold any water leak water on top of metal which would rust but maybe they were thinking that it would help keep the tank from freezing in cold weather? I don’t know the reason for it but I figured if Winnebago added it, I should at least replace it and the tape was the easiest method. 

With that bent plate replacement in mind, I am posting some pictures from under the RV with those plates removed. It’s hard getting a good overall picture of the underside of the tank cabinet but these are for my reference. Here’s a shot of the opening and the rust that accumulated from the bad anti-siphon valve and probably another leak that has plugged with rust over the years. I’ll be monitoring this one and when it starts leaking again, it’ll probably indicate that it’s time to replace the tank.   

 

Here you can see the bottom of the tank and it’s insulating jacket. And the 1″ insulation installed in the bottom of the tank cabinet installed by Winnebago. 

Here’s those two hoses (after removing the angled 9″ pipes that were all rusty and replacing with just metal couplings) that circulate hot engine coolant through the tank while the engine is running. 

And that access hole which is kind of worthless for repairs. Maybe it’s needed when replacing the tank?

Anyway, later today my son will be by to reinstall those cover plates.

June 2025:

Over the last several months it became more and more difficult to have a comfortable shower. I thought it was caused by the valve rubber seals in the faucet. There are several ‘O’ rings in there and periodically I’ll take it apart and clean than lubricate the rings and it’ll behave for a long while afterwards. But this series of issues was a tad different. It became nearly impossible to set the temp correctly without it skittering back and forth between too cold and too hot. Which made showering difficult. So I took the faucet apart for maintenance, lubed everything, and found that it didn’t help much this time. And a few days later, I actually needed some hot water from the kitchen faucet (not something I need very often) and when I flipped it on set for full hot, it ran normally for a while, the water started getting hot and then is just slowed to a trickle. Huh. Never had that happen before. Found the same issue at every faucet. So that kinda indicated a problem in the plumbing or at the water heater. Took a while but I finally remembered that there is an anti-siphon valve on the back of the water heater. 

So, time to crawl under the RV and check it out. Shut off power the night before, shut of shore water, cracked open the relief valve, drained the tank. Spotted the brass valve up in the crowded backside area of the heater. It’s enclosed as it’s supposed to not freeze too easily. When parked the electric element keeps everything warm on the backside of the heater and the output heads up into the warm living space. Tried to figure out how to get the dang thing out of there as there wasn’t much access. Winnebago had installed a 6″ diameter plastic access that you unscrew so you can see inside there but it seemed to be designed for when they were building the RV, not for repairs later.

Sat around thinking about it for a day. And around that time my son dropped by, I explained, and he crawled under the RV and went to work. I’d perused the plumbing drawings but didn’t realize that the two hoses down low on the tank were engine heating hoses coming from the engine/radiator, mainly because my drawings didn’t show them. Yeah, that’s right, the tank has passive heating while on the road that comes from the engine. Anyway, son cut one just to get better access to the valve and it started spewing AF. Dammit. Emptied the surge tank next to the radiator in short order. 

After that mistake, he pulled out the bad valve and found room to pull the actual water plumbing pieces together and reattach, without a new valve. I’d checked on iRV2 for advice and a couple RV’ers had said they just removed the valve and left it out without adverse effects. So, that’s what we did. And with that accomplished, I had hot water again. Well done, son, well done. 

April 2019:

The water heater in this ’02 Winnebago Journey is the same Atwood brand that was in my ’94 Bounder so I’m use to it and had a reasonable expectation that it would work at least for a short while after I bought the rig in Feb. ’16 until I could get to servicing and/or doing maintenance on it. I didn’t expect it to take 3 years or more for me to get around to servicing it but, here we are, April of ’19.

This tank is a 10 gallon, with the OEM installed electric heater element. And there’s a switch in the hallway of the RV above the EMS panel to operate it. The element is inserted into the back of the heater before it’s installed so if it goes bad on me, it’ll be a much more difficult job to get to to change then my other Atwood where I’d installed an after market Hot Rod type electric heater.

The heater is working fine, it’s just that I stayed in Parker Arizona not long ago and learned that their water has a hardness level of 1,000 where a typical hardness is 300. That was confirmed by all the crusty white stuff on the parks faucets I saw while in that town.

That got me thinking that I’d better drain and flush my tank after I got to a different RV park. So this article is about that and what I found while checking the tank. First a couple of pictures of the outside of the heater…

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And here’s what the heater looked like shortly after I bought the rig. Didn’t look too bad back then. The rust doesn’t really affect operation so I’m not too worried about it.

And here’s what it looks like now…it sort of got away from me. Should have been checking it more often. But than again, it could have been because the hard water messed up the valve, which started dripping and that splashed minerals all over everything?

I haven’t allowed the tank much attention since I bought it but recently I did, and immediately noticed that the pressure relief valve was dripping. And there were signs of mineral build up on things. Great. It looks like it’s been dripping at least for several days, if not weeks.

Ordered a new 1/2″ pressure relief valve, Campco 10423 from Amazon and left the old one on for the 2 days it took to get the new one. Turned off the heater switch the night before the valve arrived. Once it arrived, turned off shore water at the faucet, and flipped open the paddle on the top of the old valve. Let water burble out of there for a while and then opened the petcock the PO had installed in the drain.

I turned on the shore water with the petcock open in hopes to flush any minerals out off the bottom of the tank. Too much mineral build up on the heater element isn’t good at all as it develops hot spots where the minerals are, and they tend to fail at those places. I don’t expect there to be much since this is an aluminum tank and it doesn’t really corrode or accumulate minerals like a steel tank would. But the element might be steel. The valve though, is brass and some steel and it had mineral coat and crust here and there. That’s why it was dripping.

After the tank was drained & flushed, used a 12″ adjustable wrench to unscrew the old pressure valve. An open end wrench would work too.

Applied 4 turns of Teflon tape to the threads of the valve and screwed it in. Lined it up the same way as the old valve was, the 4 layers of Teflon sort of guarantee that it’ll be tight and not leak where I set it. It’s set that way, with the open end turned slightly to the left of center so if it does drip or opens due to pressure, there’s less chance water will get inside the flame tube.

While I was in there, tried to clean things up a bit, removed some of the mineral buildup from off of some of the components.

And that’s it. New relief valve installed.