The Rest of the Story

Ok...So to review...
To get the old water heater out I had to cut the in and out water lines.

Once I put the pipe dope on the threads on top of the heater I put the connectors I made on. I made sure I cranked them down good and tight because once I made the solder connections there would be no more turning of the connectors.

One thing I thought was kinda weird...Was that I had to prop the new water heater up on bricks so it wouldn't be sitting on the basement floor. The old ones both have 'feet' on the bottom.

So here are the water lines all connected up. So now you can see that if I had done it all in-place, not only would the bottom joint have been really close to the heater and could have caused problems, but the next joint up would have had to have been soldered upside-down...Not impossible, but why make things harder when you don't have to?

So once the water lines were all together, I re-connected the gas line...Turned everything back on...And fired it up.

Half an hour after connecting it and turning it on I was enjoying a nice hot shower :)

Overall, not a bad little project. Nothing was very hard about it...And I got to play with my torch.