Hi I've gotten a lot of useful info from this site for a while - right now I haven't found a thread where someone asked this particular question - not sure if it's a stupid question or not. Basically I've got two water heaters, one has developed a slow leak, looks like it's coming from the anode rod and possibly cold water in. They are both 12 years old, and we have hard water here, so I figure I'll replace them both to be safe but can't do it for a week or so. I'd like to turn the leaking one off to avoid any horrible problems (these are in the attic). The thing is, I can't tell if they are in parallel or series - they are in an attic and about 50 ft apart, so I can't see how the piping runs due to insulation etc. They are both set to hot, and after running the hot water in a tub for about a minute, the intake pipe for both heaters seemed to still be cool, so I'm assuming they are in parallel? It's very hot here so a little hard to tell if the pipe had warmed up or not, just tried a quick test.
Main question - since I can't tell if they are in series or parallel, if I shut one of them off and close its in valve, will it cause any major problems or safety issues if they happen to be in one configuration vs the other? I guess I'm wondering what would happen if they were in series and I closed the valve for one of them. I plan to leave it off and disconnected for a week or two while I find replacements etc. Thanks!
Main question - since I can't tell if they are in series or parallel, if I shut one of them off and close its in valve, will it cause any major problems or safety issues if they happen to be in one configuration vs the other? I guess I'm wondering what would happen if they were in series and I closed the valve for one of them. I plan to leave it off and disconnected for a week or two while I find replacements etc. Thanks!