Repairing a Broken Water Heater Drain Plug
Dave SolbergDescription
A broken water heater drain plug on your RV can be a hassle to repair, depending whether your plug is metal or plastic. In this free video, Dave Solberg teaches you a couple quick solutions for removing a corroded or broken plug from the exterior of your RV’s water heater. You’ll learn how to diagnosis your particular issue, and discover the simplest way to fix and replace the drain plug and get back to enjoying clean hot water!
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8 Responses to “Repairing a Broken Water Heater Drain Plug”
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How about a leaking water heater from the drain with a metal plug with the anode. I have Teflon taped mine a couple of times but it still leaks. It’s almost acting as if I have a bad weld at the fitting. If so, is that repairable? Thnx, G
first thing I did was get rid of plastic drain plug. Installed short galvanized nipple and connecter a short steel braided toilet supply line with a shut off. Makes for easy draining and gets the water out of the cabinet space. And no more drain plug.
My drain plug is leaking proficiently on my hot water heater in my rv
Rather than risk damaging the threads on the tank when removing a stubborn plastic drain plug, I have found that drilling out the center of the plastic plug and heating an old screwdriver with a propane torch works well. Laying the hot screwdriver against the drilled out hole quickly melts the remaining plastic plug down to the metal tank threads without damaging the metal threads. At that point it is relatively easy to pry the plastic plug loose for removal.
When this happened on my plastic plug, I heated a 1/2" socket extension, melted it into the plastic hole, cooled and turned out the plug.
We bought a camper with a broken plastic plug , I used an easy out for pipes it came out very easy. The people had tried to pound in a big screwdriver but that didn't work.
My unit is a 2017. At first I had plenty of hot water but now, not so much. With out spending money that I don’t have, how can I get more hot water coming out. Thank you Ben Out.
Water heater rods