Video: How to Shut Off a Water Heater

CONCORD — Host, Sarah Rutan: In the event of a leaking water heater, you’ll need to know the proper procedure for shutting it off. Today we’re in Concord with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Alex Diaz of Water Heaters Masters to learn more.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Alex Diaz: So you’ve discovered that your water heater’s leaking all over the garage. So here’s some tips — professional tips on how to prevent the water heater from leaking even more. So we’re going to climb up here– So the first thing we’re going to look for is the actual shut-off to the water heater. And most water heaters have a shut-off on the right-hand side. In this case it’s this yellow handle, which is a ball valve. What you’re going to want to do is grab the ball valve, and then do a quarter turn. It’s called a quarter-turn valve. That’ll stop the water heater — Or, that’ll stop water from coming into the water heater.

The very next thing we want to do is. We want to step down here. The very next thing we’re going to do is we’re actually going to try to turn off the gas. And there’s two ways to turn off the gas, one is the primary and the secondary. So we’re going to talk about the primary. The primary is this one here. It’s also a quarter turn valve, so we’re going to go ahead and turn that off. That’ll shut the gas off. The very next thing. Let’s say this valve is not working. We’re going to go by the thermostat.

So if you come down here, you have a thermostat. And this thermostat also has the capability of turning off the gas. One way to tell where the gas will be off, there’s a setting that tells you “off.” So you have a pilot off button. So you want to go ahead and focus on the off button, so what you want to do. You want to rotate this dial all the way to the off button. Once you have this off, then this status light will not continue to run.

Now that you have the water heater under control, the very next thing you’re going to do is, you’re going to get two pieces of information. You’re going to get the model number, and the serial number. You want to make sure you write that down and call the local plumber. Thank you, and have a great day.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local top-rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.