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Electric water heaters lose a lot of efficiency. They get build up on your heating elements, and you get sediment all on the bottom. You have to heat up all that sediment before you can heat up the water itself. Flushing them annually is a big deal.
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You could probably go back in every 4 years and change out your anode rod, and get a longer life out of your typical tank water heater. There's an anode rod that's made out of magnesium or aluminum. That's just a solid metal rod that goes down the top of your heater.
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All the components in a water heater and the water quality issues you have will deteriorate the galvanized steel tank. They typically attack the softest metal. So if you have magnesium, which is a very soft metal or aluminum, it will attack that magnesium or aluminum anode rod. It's kind of a sacrificial rod. Instead of eating the cast iron or the instead of eating the galvanized steel tank, it'll deteriorate that replaceable anode rod.
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A lot of times, people don't notice whether when your anode rod is completely deteriorated, a lot of times, you'll start getting a rotten egg smell. Rotten egg smell could be a sign of trouble.
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You’ll need a plumber to replace the rod, its difficult to replace. You got to have a pretty big impact to get that, that big steel nut out of there. And sometimes we can't get over the impact without using ice cubes. If it's hot, it expands. If we get ice cubes, set them on top of that big nut so it freezes it. The nut eventually shrinks down so I can get an impact wrench on there.
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Before impact wrenches, we just had a big wrench and a breaker bar trying to pull that thing out of there. Sometimes we just couldn't do it. Especially in tight closets.