Now that's a guy who been around a few old timers. I used to do that. AS they say, for reals. My guys have the fancy green liquid for that but I still light a match and take my torch to it. They used to freak out when I do that

When I lived in San Jose years ago, we used an off duty fireman to install a new water heater. Overall good Plan I think. Especially of yours is below ground? Ours was in garage.
Lots of earthquake / fire safety considerations.

Luckily there is a valve right by the heater

there should be, code requirement

A match won't catch a very small leak. You need the soapy stuff and some patience. I connect welding hoses all the time and the soap plus watching the gauges over a period of time tells me whether I'm good or not.

Not to mention that the potential for danger is always present. Yeah, old timers did some crazy siht and I'm an old timer.

When I was really little we had an old plumber that was going to do some work on an old WH that didn't have a temp and pressure release valve. It burst nearly driving him through a wall. It was boiling and making steam. He lived but he was a mess.

We've come a long way since then safety wise.

Success, I think. New water and gas flex lines. Home Depot doesn’t carry pipe dope anymore so I used the thicker yellow “teflon” tape designated for gas fittings. Modified the 2” PVC vent, it takes a straighter path now. Filled, no gas leak per nose and soapy water, blower started, burner ignited, status light is making the appropriate blink pattern, and now waiting for hot water. Took about three hours. Restrapping to the wall was actually the fiddliest part.

I set to 130F because everyone complained about the 140F I used before.

Although this is supposed to be the direct replacement, AO Smith swapped the hot and cold inlets. No idea why. Bored engineer? Noticed it on the pre-flight check.

Thanks everyone. That’s $000s the ripoff Water Heater companies didn’t get!

AO Smith has never “swapped” hot and cold feeds to the heater??? I install AO Smith daily and have been for 23yrs. Care to share a pic of the top of heater?

It’s always hot left cold right this is an industry standard across all brands

Maybe the water heater had to be rotated to position the pipe connections correctly ?

California thing? Must only cause cancer in CA as it's available here.

Just a warning if you used the stainless braided flex lines for your water connections, the internal rubber lining will eventually break down and you’ll get little black rubber particles in your hot water. Took me a while to figure it out, I went back with hard copper tubing.

Yeah - my bad, combination of water heater orientation, late night, and general stupidity.

There was a “kit” at Home Depot, corrugated stainless steel tubing, one blue and one red. There was also corrugated copper tubing for water heaters, like what I had before. I got the kit because the colors were pretty ...