Water Heater Installation
When is the last time you looked at your water heater? Almost no one ever does. That is especially true for mobile homes where they are often in a compartment with an outside door which requires a ladder and screwdriver to open.
Water heaters normally fail when the tank rusts/corrodes through and they start to leak. Once you find a leak you have a problem that must be fixed within days. The leak will quickly get worse so it doesn't really matter if you can't afford a new water heater, don't have time to deal with it, etc. It's kind of like having a sick child; you're going to have to deal with it soon.
If the leak drips onto the burner and puts out the flame, you notice the problem when you hop into the shower and there isn't any hot water.
If the floor of the water heater room is hard and water resistant like concrete, the dripping water will run to the side and soak into the drywall. In this case, your first indication of a problem will be the unique smell of wet drywall. It takes very little water to make drywall turn to mush. If you are not familiar with the smell it might be worth picking up a scrap piece of it on your next visit to a home improvement center and wetting it at home. It's an odor worth knowing!
If you live in a manufactured home with a particle board floor you probably have a really big problem. By the time you smell wet flooring or drywall the floor under the water heater will have turned to rotten sawdust. When you open the door to the water heater compartment you may find the heater resting on one of the floor joists and/or leaning against a compartment wall.
In my case my wife noticed there was a wet spot on the floor of the bathroom which is on the other side of the wall from the water heater. When I checked I could see a lot of lime dried onto the water heater drain line and a steady drip. I was able to tighten the drain line almost a quarter of a turn and that seemed to stop the drip. The water heater was only four years old so I tried to convince myself expansion and contraction had cause the drain line to drip.
However, the floor of the water heater room stayed wet and my wife soon figured out it was dripping on the back side too. A pie pan placed there soon filled with water.
Our water heater compartment has a floor drain so the dripping water should have gone down the drain. However, the "contractor" who build the place didn't get the floor level. The drain opening is NOT at the low spot of the floor!
The water heater should not have failed so quickly. In fact, it was probably still in warranty. However, who keeps all their warranty papers and is is really worth trying to collect if you are four years into a six year warranty.