Plumbing – What’s involved in moving a hot water tank to the garage

garageplumbingwater tank

After a recent electric hot water tank leak on the second floor – I've decided to relocate the tank to the garage.

On the other side of the block wall in the garage – I have the laundry room – so we can tap into the h/c lines.
The electrical panel is inside the house right near the entrance from the garage.

Lots of questions…

What should I be aware of while doing this – is this even a good idea?
Should I keep the tank on the concrete floor or should I use some kind of barrier (over even a drain pan)
Should I use expansion tank?
Can I just connect to the h/c water line currently feeding the laundry room?

Appreciate your feedback and guidance/suggestions.

Thanks

Best Answer

Have you considered adding a drain and rigid metal drain pan to the water heater in its current location. That's likely to be a much saner approach?

To move an electric water heater, the new location needs the following:

  1. 220v outlet on its own circuit with heavy-gauge wiring rated for an electric water heater. This is doable. If there isn't already such a circuit, you can hire an electrician to put in a new one, and you said the panel is pretty close by.

  2. An incoming cold water line, which will be harder, but if worse comes to worst, you can run a PEX line from the incoming cold water line on the second floor to the new location in the garage.

  3. An outgoing hot water line that serves as a trunk feeding the rest of the house with branch lines going to the fixtures. This is going to be the deal-breaker. The previous location probably has the correct trunkline hot water plumbing. If you seal that off and make a new input in your garage, you'll be supplying hot water to your whole house through a former branch line, which is narrow. Hot water pressure may decrease, and the time it takes to get hot water to distance fixtures will rise quite a lot. And you may be able to run fewer hot water outputs at once.
Related Topic