Turbo Tank Cleaner

This is a great little tool, which does what it claims to do and seems to be pretty durably made. I have just used it, and my experience leaves me with a warning I should submit for others. If you're using this for regular maintenance, this tool definitely does the job. Be ready for some water to flow out while you're swapping the valve for this tool; as long as the valve at the top is closed not much should come out, but you'll definitely need an old towel and a shop vac or carpet cleaner vacuum isn't a bad idea for pulling up water. Go slow with the drill, and I found it helpful to start in reverse at first, and switch rotation directions from time to time, going forward most of the time to bring in debris a little faster. I had the hose going outside at ground level, with the end in a location where the sediment wouldn't be a problem. This is probably going to be a workout for your drill, if you've got a significant build-up of sediment. It was a good 45 minutes of running my older 18V Ryobi brushed drill in 1st gear -- didn't take more than a quarter of the battery to do the job, but the drill got quite warm. Most of the job was at a partial squeeze of the trigger. I ended up using a 90 degree chuck adapter (one that maintains the same output speed, 1:1 gear ratio) and that made the job more comfortable, but wasn't necessary. The warning is for those using this as I did, in a situation where the water heater had not been properly maintained. In this case sediment had built up significantly. I needed to drain the tank to replace the lower element which had failed, and the sediment was complicating that process (and may have contributed to the failure) so I purchased this tool to help. When I finally got the tank cleaned and drained, I pulled the heater element only to find that what I removed was just the base of it, with two severed stumps of the element sticking out. The corroded and weakened element had been completely ripped off the base by the tool while I was cleaning the tank, and that discovery started a frustrating hour-long adventure with a borescope and grabber tool, to fish for the mangled element and pull it out of the hole. Overall I'm pretty impressed with the idea and execution of this tool. It's clearly manufactured to a cost and it feels like something that will last a few jobs and will then need to be replaced. And even so I'd call that a great deal at this price. Apparently this tool was manufactured from ABS until recently, when they switched to polycarbonate, and I think that was a fantastic choice. Polycarbonate is an extremely tough material, and it appears they did not skimp on it for the dimensions and thicknesses of the tool. It did jam a few times during operation as it attempted (and mostly failed) to injest very large chunks of what looked like anode rod material (I need to replace that too), which I dealt with by reversing the tool briefly. That said when I removed the tool after the job was done, a couple of these chunks were still lodged in the inlet where the agitator spring emerges and had been grinding away at the tool for an unknown time. Perhaps the designed shape of the water passage through the tool will evolve over time to make these jams less likely. No idea if the manufacturing would be feasible, but I'd easily pay 3-4 times as much for an improved "pro" model made from stainless steel, with clear polycarbonate windows in appropriate locations.

The tank cleaner worked well on both reverse and forward direction cleaning the residue out of the water tank. It took about 45 minutes of banking the back and forth to remove most of the residue and I used the Turbo Tank shutoff valve also to help with the cleaning. The clear tank cleaner actually is used to see the residue being released from the tank and flows down through the hose discharge. The cleaning removed the tank banking and noise from the build-up of residue. Good product.

My water heater drain valve was a booger to get off. Once I did the rest was pretty easy. It did make a bit of a mess but a few towels and a shop vac made for easy cleanup. The tool worked pretty good. Turning it forward it didn't have any problems but when reversing the drill the auger would come loose and not spin inside the tank. It is only held onto the shaft by the tension of the spring and once it was a little used it didn't have enough tension to reverse the drill. I'm going to try to solder it to the shaft next time to try and get it to hold in place better, since the reverse setting seemed to knock more crud loose. I tried to capture my sediment in a bucket for the review but my hose just blew out and all the debris went down the street. It did knock off quite a bit and my tank wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. A few large chunks and lots of little stuff.

Works great! Helped break up the sediment and clear it out. It was easy to follow the instructions and get my tank back to working order; it took about 15 minutes total.

Where to start...this thing is fantastic. I thought I had been diligent with my water heater maintenance. I bought this device, connected it as instructed, and was amazed at the amount of debris it removed from my tank. It pulled out about 3 gallons of hard, crunchy scale and buildup. While doing this, I also replaced the anode rod, and now my tank no longer makes snap, crackle, pop sounds. I used the device multiple times over an hour, continuously watching the crud flow out.

I have a 50 gal Bradford White Defender natural gas water heater that is 8 years old. Over the past year, the water temp fluctuated from luke warm to decently warm, despite the thermostat on the tank being set to "hot". We live in Vegas where we rely on the mineral rich Colorado River for water. After a fair amount of research, it became clear that our issue was sediment at the bottom of our tank. On a gas water heater, the burner sits under the lowest part of the tank and heats the inner tank. If there is sediment present at the bottom of a gas tank, the burner has a hard time heating up the tank because the sediment acts as a insulator. This causes decreased temperature reliability and thermostat confusion. In our case, taking a shower was a roll of the dice re temperature because the water heater's gas burner had to heat through the sediment before heating the water. The Turbo Tank Cleaner was able to remove the vast majority of the sediment, allowing the tank to evenly heat the water like it did when new. Well designed product. A few tips: 1. Read the directions. 2.Watch related videos. 3. If you have a gas water heater, you stand the greatest gain because sediment at the bottom of the tank is acting like an insulator. 4. If you have a gas water heater, remember you have a gas flu tube that is situated at the center of the tank. Try to snake the Turbo tool to both sides of the center tube if possible. Google a picture of the inner components of a gas water heater to better understand the configuration. Bottom Line: this is a very good tool that does far more than getting the gunk out of your hot water tank. It makes your water hotter by allowing it to heat more efficiently, saving you money and providing more consistent hot water temps when taking a bath or shower. This is an excellent tool that should be used at least once a year. Read the directions, watch the videos, and take your time. It's an easy process that takes less than an hour; well worth your time and money.

If you have a badly impacted tank this product may work well for you, but it didn't on my gas heater. The premise seemed sound and the tool seemed sturdy and of decent quality. My tank is 17 years old, has not been flushed before but I'm trying to get a couple more years out of it. My water quality is very good and not hard at all. I think most of the deposits in my tank were from the deteriorated anode rod which settled along the bottom edge of the tank where the convex bottom and sidewalls meet. The whip on the tool was unable to access these spots. It's possible that I did not run the tool hard or long enough to agitate the water enough to work it loose. With all of the racket the whip was making banging around inside the tank (and yes the tank was full of water per the instructions), I was hesitant to run it much more. I didn't want to risk damaging the inside surface of the tank. This tool may work best for electric tanks, but since gas heaters have a flue stack running up through the center of the tank the whip can only work the left or right side of it (depending on which way you direct the whip in) and not really reach behind it opposite the drain port. This also limits the movement of the whip to churn up that water at the bottom. I had better results attaching a 3/8-inch poly tube to my wet vac and going through the drain port while my son directed my movements from above through the anode rod port. Overall 3 stars per my experience. I think the premise is sound but maybe a steel wand beating against the enamel tank coating isn't such a good idea. The risks and limitations of this product should be noted by the manufacturer.

works great. water heater cleaned with ease