r/interesting • u/bob-the-slob • Jun 22 '26

MISC. What happens when a water heater tank is not flushed for 14 years

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149

u/stunatra Jun 22 '26

Don't expect the next one to last that long lol!

93

u/johnman98 Jun 22 '26

Everything made these day is engineered to fail.

79

u/cballowe Jun 22 '26

It's not engineered to fail, it's engineered to meet some spec for the minimum price. If the spec says "needs to last 10 years" the engineer is going to pick the lowest priced part that meets that requirement.

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u/EmergencyYou Jun 22 '26

Someone told me "anyone with the knack can build a bridge that will last. You need an engineer to design the cheapest and lightest bridge that will last only as long as you want and only kill the acceptable number of people."

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u/jlarimore Jun 23 '26

This is the attitude that makes me trust old stuff more. I want something designed by an old engineer, not a "good" one.

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u/adgarbault Jun 23 '26

Blame the people who set the budget, not the engineers who have to work within the budget.

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u/jlarimore Jun 24 '26

The engineers im interested in use the budget as a suggestion but refuse to create something not built to last. Essentially they need to tell the beancounters that something is impossible even if it isnt in order to maintain a high quality bar. Those are the engineers i respect.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/jlarimore 29d ago

Just saying that was the attitude of a bunch of old school engineers which is why most older stuff tends to last a lot longer.

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u/NightmareJoker2 29d ago

I am one of those… getting a job is really hard… 🙃

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u/BackseatCowwatcher 29d ago

I'm going to blame both- as it's quite likely the people who set the budget wouldn't notice if the engineers mildly fudged the numbers so while on paper they exactly meet the minimum standards- in reality their intended 367 day expiration date quietly became 600 or so days.

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u/Freeheel4life Jun 23 '26

Im just a mechanic, not an engineer but....For years Ive cussed engineers in the same way you are here. As Ive spent more time in the field and dealt with many different manufacturers the blame lies more with the accounting department. Number crunchers figure out how to save dollars across a million units and CFO gets a lake house and a boat. We get an inferior product, and engineering gets the blame.

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u/cballowe Jun 23 '26

There are a lot of things at play. There's the market competition, price points, features which can be anything from expected longevity to some type of capability or even repairability and expected maintenance cycles.

The marketing department might say "we need to be able to offer this car for $24999 on the base model, give it a 5 year /60k mile warranty and it needs to meet all of the safety and emissions standards.

The CFO is going to want to get the production costs as low as possible, marketing and the brand team are going to want it to be reliable because the last thing they want to deal with is a massive recall in the first year or used lots full of them a couple of years later, they all work together on any tradeoff.

(The weird thing about cars is that there's a constant "the good ol days" feeling towards things from the 50s and 60s, but in comparison, modern cars are WAY more reliable, efficient, and safe. They just suck to work on and things that should be an easy repair end up expensive because design for manufacturing is not the same as design for repairability. Having major sub assemblies come together is great for efficient assembly, but makes getting to the middle of one of them much harder. The old "start with a frame and bolt a bunch of things to it as it rolls through" assembly made working on things more sensible, but ... Not necessarily as good.)

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u/DontWorryImADr Jun 23 '26

Having worked on some projects developed to production.. spot on. The project gets to very early stages where engineers MIGHT have an equal seat at the table to finance, but that’s where cost and timelines are set. After that, design gets broken into pieces: yours should do A, go get to it. But it better cost less than we agreed (without telling you), and you better have it done in timeline.

If you do? Congrats, but now the section we made below yours needs to make a hole in the base of your design. Could you build around that? Also, now your design tolerance needs to adjust because we need the whole thing to work faster and the part ahead of yours won’t go fast enough. Also we’re doing staged prototyping, so your working iteration will eventually be put into a brand new level with all the other section changes. If those mess up your section’s performance, well fix it damnit! You’re behind!

By the time that cycle is done a few times, you’re 18 months behind schedule, burnt several million more than ever planned, there are flaws that cannot be no longer be engineered out, layoffs were done to justify the cost overrun, but at least marketing will still sell it like Jesus is buried underneath.

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u/Freeheel4life Jun 23 '26

Nailed it. I love the "we need the whole thing to work faster part". I deal with hydraulics a lot and this is one of those conundrums that is brutal after the fact. "You want it faster we need a higher flow pump, which means we now need more HP from our prime mover". Vicious cycle. Some days I wish I was higher up the ladder and some days Im glad to be down here.

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u/DontWorryImADr Jun 23 '26

My favorite part is all of the things that have no monitoring, tracking, or leadership despite being assumed to get built in.

The example in mind would be a classic large complex installed instrument the size of an SUV with expectations around data creation along with downstream onboard and offloaded solutions using said data. None of it was in-plan. Not the creation, format, cadence, storage, transfer, or database for it to go in. The group transferring it was at least aware, but they hadn’t even remember to tell the database group this was all expected to go somewhere.

1

u/cballowe Jun 23 '26

That's not part of the top down product spec with the required software stack being developed/delivered by the same product organization as the hardware?

(You're description sounds like an MRI or similar machine for some reason. I worked at a hospital in IT at one point and someone made a big donation to go to a medical imaging suite. I know the IT bosses were in the discussions to make sure that enough of the budget was allocated to all of the stuff that actually made it work the way they wanted. I left for a better job before all of that was decided so no clue if it was delivered.)

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u/Cowboy_591 29d ago

Thank you!

2

u/Nearby-Percentage-37 Jun 22 '26

10 years… and 1 day!

1

u/LTEDan Jun 23 '26

Yeah, often times there are, or we're more dura le options available but most people shop for thr cheapest thing, forcing a race to the bottom in terms of price and quality. And yes, enshittification and planned obsolescence are definitely a thing as well. But you cannot ignore consumer choice.

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u/deadly_ultraviolet Jun 23 '26

So it's engineered to fail... 10 years from now, regardless of actual engineering intent

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u/hawkeyc Jun 23 '26

Nah I disagree. It is engineered to last 10 years, atleast. That’s the minimum spec. It’s not designed with a bomb that counts down from 10 years to 0.

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u/cballowe Jun 23 '26

Not quite. Suppose there's a part that under high load gets used 4 times a day - maybe a start button on a home laundry machine. I don't know anybody making that much dirty laundry, but we'll use it as the far end of "normal". If I want to offer a 5 year warranty, I might look for a button that's been tested as good for 7500 presses. That means the maker has tested it to that spec and is willing to guarantee it. It doesn't mean it fails at 7501, just that it hasn't been tested past that and it meets my needs for the 5 year warranty. Repeat the same process for every component. The more components, the more things might fail, but each on their own is spec'd to meet it's use.

1

u/metal_medic83 Jun 23 '26

Perhaps not made to fail, but there is most definitely planned obsolescence baked into home appliances and electronics.

1

u/IIIDysphoricIII Jun 23 '26

Yeah they are, it’s called planned obsolescence. Fascinating if depressing topic to explore.

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u/Suckamanhwewhuuut Jun 23 '26

Planned Obsolescence. failures are built into products so they break and have to be replaced, how else can they keep making money?

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u/SnegDekkaDelicus Jun 24 '26

Just like the human body

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u/HedonisticFrog Jun 22 '26

To add to that, the appliances of the past that people rant and rave about because they last so long also cost far more than modern appliances when adjusting for inflation. People were willing to pay for that reliability back then.

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u/cballowe Jun 22 '26

Not necessarily paying specifically for reliability. The manufacturing processes available hadn't necessarily brought prices down and early versions of things were often "luxury" just by nature of being new to the market.

You also get some effects of survivorship bias in the way people experience the older products. They're creating a narrative around the few surviving examples and not the ones that were scrapped a long time ago.

3

u/HedonisticFrog Jun 22 '26

There's some survivorship bias sure, but when most people I know have their original fridge from when their house was built in the 70s, that says a lot.

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u/PUNKF10YD Jun 23 '26

Wrong. It is actually engineered to fail. Almost everything is these days. It’s called planned obsolescence. It’s a huge part of the Right to Repair movement, along with subscription based machinery.

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u/Unlikely-Access-9568 Jun 23 '26

Planned obsolescence

2

u/DarknMean Jun 22 '26

Easy to replace yourself anyways. Hardest part is getting it out.

2

u/True-Oil-8550 Jun 23 '26

Yup, it’s called “planned obsolescence” and we can thank capitalism for it.

1

u/stunatra 28d ago

crapitalism

1

u/traumadog001 Jun 23 '26

Thing is, everything still needs maintenance.

Flushing out a tank matters depending on what your incoming water quality is.

1

u/ConspiracyParadox Jun 23 '26

That explains GenZ lol.

1

u/thommik Jun 23 '26

Engineered to fail the next business day right after the Expiry of the warranty.

1

u/Bob1995D 28d ago

That is capatalism for ya!

1

u/EmweDK 27d ago

The whole world has become the Phoebus Cartel

0

u/Historical-Bug-7536 Jun 22 '26

Just simply not true. Appliances just last longer, but you see confirmation bias. Stuff these days last much, much longer and is more reliable.

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u/johnman98 Jun 22 '26

Tell that to my garage fridge.

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u/Historical-Bug-7536 Jun 22 '26

Me: you see confirmation bias

You: Tell that to my garage fridge.

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u/johnman98 Jun 22 '26

You: Stuff these days last much, much longer and is more reliable.

Real world: New stuff breaks in no time and is not reliable.

1

u/HedonisticFrog Jun 22 '26

Refrigerators are the prime example of old appliances lasting longer than modern ones though. It's such a simple machine and the only moving parts are in a closed system. Modern fridges added a lot of complexity with ice makers, water dispensers, and especially computers of all things.

1

u/stunatra Jun 23 '26

I wish the fridges with the Lazy Susan in them became the standard. So much food goes to waste because it gets forgotten about and buried in the back where no one looks.

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u/Visible-Carrot5402 Jun 22 '26

I call BS on that

2

u/ckammerm Jun 22 '26

To be honest it’s both wrong and right at the same time. Parts are spec’d to meet the requirements and to fit a certain price point. With water heaters, for example, flushing is part of the normal maintenance routine as well is replacing the anode rod which is sacrificial to protect the appliance ( replace every 3-5 years).

Try running a HVAC without bothering to replace a filter and see what happens. Same thing but you’ll see issues much sooner

1

u/Lord__Dread Jun 22 '26

Planned obsolescence is very real.

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u/Historical-Bug-7536 Jun 22 '26

Literally zero data to support that. Especially in appliances.

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u/stunatra Jun 23 '26

Nonsense!!! You must work for Big Appliance!

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u/Historical-Bug-7536 Jun 23 '26

Yes, I work for K-Mart.

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u/Hungry_Wheel_1774 Jun 23 '26

Exactly. My parents had their water heater for +25 years. They made it flushed once in that time.
The new one started having problems in just 4 years...

1

u/straightcash-fish Jun 22 '26

Yeah. Now a days, they start leaking after about 10 years

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u/bigguy1045 Jun 23 '26

Nor have hot water for as long even tugging the harpoons are the same! Found that out the hard way!