My plan for Tuesday was to remove the anode from the water heater, inspect it for wear, and replace it if necessary.
Anodes are good ideas—they're essentially sacriicial pieces of metal with lower oxidation energies than whatever they're attached to. The idea here is that the anode will corrode instead of the water heater wall, and all of this works because they're in the same corrosive medium and are electrically connected.
I remember my high school shop teacher commenting that automotive body corrosion can be stopped simply by strapping a block of magnesium to one of the body panels. I'm not entirely sure this works (simply because the corrosion is discontinuous, unlike metal immersed in water) but whatever—this is conceptually sound, and replacing the anode in my water heater is a good way to avoid having to buy a new one every few years.
The problem is that although I'm really excited about removing the anode (new water heater anodes reportedly look like a string of metal sausage links) the anode rod is corroded to the heater fitting and I can't remove it. PB Blaster, hammering, and a 15" breaker bar haven't solved this problem.
And I'm unwilling to bust out the impact wrench to take this rod out. Because the point is to avoid having to replace the water heater.
P.S. I'm not sure the wine helped the situation much, either.
If you dont mind drainging the water heater, you can remove the lower heating element and inspect it. The amount of corrosion built up on the element should give you a good idea of what condition the anode is in. Also, you can look through the hole for the element and get a look, if only slightly, at the anode.
Ha ha, you said sausage... ha ha, rod.
Captain Shortstop-
This is a good idea, except that to inspect the anode, I specifically have to look at the 6" at each end. I don't expect I'll be able to see those when looking through the heating element hole.
Raven-
Johnson!
--D