My Hot Water Heater Smells Like Rotten Eggs

What Can You Do?

If you turn off the cold water valve to your heater, open a hot faucet somewhere in your house to relieve some of the pressure in your heater, drain some water from your tank (but not all of it) and put some hydrogen peroxide bleach in your heater. Close all your valves again, let the cold water back into your heater and run some water from all of your taps. This will work for a while, but it’s not a permanent fix.

The best way to fix this problem is to replace the anodes in your boiler with a zinc anode. This normally removes the reaction that causes the rotten egg smell, and it will give you a much more permanent fix than running the hydrogen peroxide through the system. If you don’t have any history of working with hot water heaters, make sure you call in a professional to do this – it’s not worth ruining your hot water heater at the sake of saving the call out charge of a professional plumber! Simply call a plumbing company and tell them what you need doing, and they’ll be able to send somebody out who can do this for you.