Special water heater for mobile home

[terrifromohio]

My hot water heat is going out. Its popping and making all kinds of noises. I want to buy a new one before it goes. This one is over 7 years old.
The current hot water heater is installed in a closet in a bedroom. My question is do I have to buy a special hot water heater for a mobile home? Most of the ones I am looking out say they must be installed ONLY in outside compartments or the warranty is void.
Can you buy a regular hot water heater like one you would put in a house? If not, why?
Input would be appreciated on this.

Terri

[Greg]

Electric water heaters are the same between stick built & Mobile home, the differences may be Physical size and water connection locations (top vs side).

Gas water heaters MUST be a Mobile home approved unit. Gas units use an outside fresh air intake system. This prevents air depletion and reduces the possibility of a carbon monoxide emergency.

Greg

[UmpJJ]

I just replaced my "closet" electric water heater with a stock one from Lowes. Other than doing a bit of cramming to get a drip pan under it, the project was a piece of cake.

UmpJJ

[terrifromohio]

Did you use one approved for a mobile home or just a regular one like for a house? I know lowes carries the ones for mobile homes.

Terri

[mdnagel]

Terri, from what I've been able to glean, with ELECTRIC hot water heaters it doesn't matter, as long as you've got suitable power (electrical circuit has sufficient amps/volts [most are 240v]) and it fits*.

* Make sure it can fit through everywhere it needs to get through until it lands in it's installation destination.

I recently had an electrical circuit added so that I can switch from gas to electric. I'm going with a 40 gallon 4500 watt unit (from HD) that's slightly bigger in diameter than my current one (the ones that match my existing diameter are labeled as "Mobile Home," which is just a way to get you to pay more money; if you can't use a unit that's bigger in diameter then I suppose that one would be happy that these are available, but they don't HAVE to be used, nothing special with them other than physical size [and locations of water connections, which is something that's not uncommon to have to redo anyway]).

UmmJJ: how did you go about mashing your drip pan in? I'll be faced with having to do that as well (also will end up making it more difficult because I'll be running a bunch of new PEX lines through the bottom of my HWH compartment).

[UmpJJ]

I set the pan first and had to jockey the heater in on top of it. Like lugging a dead body, but as long as you don't puncture the pan you can dent it a little! As far as the PEX lines, just make sure the nipples line up appropriately where the lines come in - measure twice, cut once.

UmpJJ

[mdnagel]

OK... I was thinking you had to shoehorn your pan into the HWH closet. My pan's top diameter (they taper a bit, larger dia on top, smaller on bottom) is actually greater than the width of my closet; I'm going to have to mash the pan in place, somehow, and then try and get my plumbing holes worked around there somewhere (of course, I'll do this BEFORE the HWH gets set in).

This is what I have to work with (I've got this posted in another thread):

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